Ep. 3 - Nick Lichenstein: Ducks Unlimited | Wildlife Conservation - Miracles in Meat

Episode Transcript
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Music.

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You're listening to the Miracles in Meat Podcast. I'm Shane Thibodeau,
a fourth-generation butcher at one of the oldest meat markets in the world.
My great-grandfather started this business by slaughtering one cow or pig at
a time and selling the cuts door-to-door on horse and buggy.
Today, our products are enjoyed across the globe.
I'll attempt to give you some insight as to how we got here and explore the

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challenges we've had along the way. At Bourgeois, our mission is to preserve
our heritage generation after generation through legendary Cajun flavors and
the development of relationships, not customers.
Since 1891, Bourgeois has maintained age-old culinary traditions that fuel the
South Louisiana lifestyle.
Over the past 133 years, our Cajun products have gained global recognition,

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and for tens of thousands of
folks around the world, the Bourgeois Cajun Lady logo is a symbol of home.
Today, the fourth generation butchers sit at the nine foot maple block with
loyal customers to discuss the adventures, skills and passions that guide each of their legacies.
These conversations will become priceless resources for future generations of any industry.

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This is our way of maintaining the spirit, purpose and traditions of our lost
arts in the world of change.
133 years, four generations. We're just getting started.
Music.
All right here we go this is episode three of

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the miracles of me podcast i'm shane thibodeau sitting down today with beau
and our good buddy nick lichtenstein nick is the owner of eagle energy services
in gray and he also holds a seat at the du that's ducks unlimited national board of directors.
Nick was born into this very interesting lifestyle slash legacy of wildlife conservation.

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And he's,
you know, started at the bottom, following along, going to the banquets and
stuff with his, with his grandfather and has worked his way up in the leadership positions within DU.
And now he's got a seat at the big table and he's, you know,
he's making some impacts and, and spreading the word and making this,
this hunting thing, something that our future generations can,

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can enjoy as much as we do.
These stories are incredible, man. He's got, he's got hundreds of them and I've
heard bits and crumbles of them throughout the years,
but I've never really got to sit down and dig into him and really understand
why he does this and how he balances it all.
You know, those of you who don't truly understand what wildlife conservation

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is and how this all works, you know, people hear the term trophy hunting and
that gets a bad rap, absolutely.
But it really takes guys like this. It takes guys like Nick to sit down and
explain what is really happening behind the scenes and how these hunts are structured
and where the money goes and who is benefited.

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I think a lot of people would be very surprised to hear this.
This is something I'm passionate about as well. I'm just not as educated as
Nick on, and I don't have the experience, you know, to really get my thoughts
out there to share with other people, but Nick is great at it.
And, you know, he's allowed me to really understand more, more about this.

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And I think everyone should, this is something that, you know,
I want to pass hunting and fishing on to my kids and my grandkids and my great grandkids.
And it takes people like this that really understand how it works and are willing
to put the time and energy into,
you know, building these resources and organizations so that we can actually

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see that through so here we go we got some great stories to tell and i hope you guys have fun.
First, Nick, we're going to ask everyone the same question. What's your earliest
memories of the meat market?
Man, I can remember my grandfather bringing me there on Saturday mornings vividly.

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It'd make the same trip. So my grandfather was a shriner, and he had one of
those cool dune buggy cars, right?
And on Saturday mornings, I'd walk up to his house. He'd put me in a dune buggy,
and we'd make two stops. One, we'd circle around the bayou and go all the way
to the Schriever Bourgeois and get some smoked sausage for a gumbo later that day.

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And then right before we turned into Clara Street, which is down the street
from where he lives, Rob's Donuts was right there at the top of the road,
right there on the bayou side.
They got an ice machine right there now. But that's where the original Rob's
Donuts was. Man, I don't like that.
So we'd come in with five pounds of smoked sausage and five pounds of donuts.

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Nuts so that i man i must have been this must have been 1992 91 somewhere like
that so it was pretty early on but another memory i'd like to share with you
guys from from bourgeois is,
and and we'll get into some of the hunting stuff later on
but every single sephora that my grandfather

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ever brought me on every single one of them we'd bring
at least 15 pounds of beef jerky with
us seriously for y'all yeah or to share no hell no or to sell or to sell so
like obviously my grandfather pretty picky eater he didn't know i i usually
enjoyed eating with the tribal people and stuff like that just kind of try some

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of the african foods like the satsa and stuff like that,
but as a backup plan we would bring beef jerky and i'm telling you we'd bring 15 pounds of it.
So I remember vividly eating. I associate beef jerky with South Africa or Zimbabwe
to be specific because we would eat that every afternoon when we'd come in from

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hunting. What did they think about it up there?
They thought it was really good. I was always pretty stingy with it.
So I let the PA try it. If he put us on a really good animal,
I was like, here, here's a couple pieces. Here's your tip. But I'd keep it.
Here, you can have all the other stuff, but you ain't having the beef jerky.
So that's some really good memories of the beef jerky.

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So thank y'all for making that because it probably put me through a couple of
those long hikes chasing out the animals.
I got a question for you, Nick. Go ahead. What is mayonnaise bread?
Mayonnaise bread is the reason that my health insurance rates are so high at Eagle Energy Services.
So every morning, every single morning, we pan fry smoked sausage.

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Every single morning. Like there's not a morning that we miss.
And what we do is we pan fry that smoked sausage and we take a piece of mayonnaise
bread, take a piece of bread, put some mayonnaise on it and fold it over and
put a piece of smoked sausage in it.
The problem is you end up eating, I try not to do this anymore,
more but you end up eating six pieces of bread because you

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can't let the sausage go to waste right so evangelist
made absolutely old-fashioned yeah yeah old-fashioned
fashion or you get the regular size
i think it's i think it just says old-fashioned i just started dabbling in the
different varieties well maybe you got to learn me something yeah yeah maybe
i need the small old-fashioned with my cholesterol yeah i don't have an opinion

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yet but i'm i just started i'm 40 42 as of Saturday, so two more days.
I've made more appointments with CIS in the last three years than I have in my whole life.
And Dr. Patel, I love that dude, but he's like, no more man-ass bread.
I like how he knows about it. Yeah, how he knows about it.

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And what's funny is every single time I go visit him, he'll read to a narrator
and he'll be like, ex-tennis player, doesn't play tennis anymore,
eats a lot of man-ass bread.
Bread so where
isn't it where is man is bread exactly on the food pyramid
it's got to be in the heart right that's where all mine went obviously yeah

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my cholesterol never says so but it's one of those things that makes you happy
right hmm it's it's what is it one of those things you're gonna pass on to your
kids so they've trust me they've eaten their fair share of man Man-ass bread.
The Paxton is all about it. My daughter doesn't really care for it too much
because she's not a big man-ass person.

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But the boys, I mean, carnivores, baby. It's not about the man-ass.
You need to explain that to her.
That's right. It's about tradition, right? Yeah.
You need to have high blood pressure and cholesterol just like your dad did.
It's not about liking what you eat. Just like your grandfather did. Right, right.
You think they liked it, you know? Yeah. No, it's all they had.

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Let's go with that so anyway man has
bread is a staple at ego energy services so if
you ever come by ego energy at uh about 8 20 in
the morning you can bet your butt there's gonna be a
loaf of bread and a and a pound and a half of smoked sausage sitting on the
under stove so you're taking smoked sausage you're cutting it long ways absolutely

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you're opening it up opening it up butterflying it yeah but we like to separate
it then you get more pieces of bread out of it right okay so you So,
yeah, you're splitting it.
So we split it in half and then throw it on a fold over.
Absolutely. That's all. I mean, there's no other way to do it,
right? You do water and cover it or you just like sear it?
Man, we put a little water in it mostly because it's usually early in the morning

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and phones are ringing and we're trying to catch up on emails and stuff like that.
So you can cheat it a little bit by putting a little water in it and let it cook down.
Well, I approve. It gets the case in more tentative.
I agree. You ever save your grease? No. Oh, sort of. and Bo can attest to this.
We got a... They only use bacon grease at the camp.
So we got a... Obviously, after Ida, it kind of went away, but we had a stove,

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that... Are you familiar with, like, how bourbons made with the sour mash? So they...
For bourbon, they take the sour mash, and part of the next batch of sour mash
includes the previous batch of sour mash.
So, in essence, the barrel that they make now has the same mash in it that the
first barrel was made with. We did that with bacon grease.

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So, we could say, like, hey, we have bacon grease in this container on top of
the stove from, like, the 80s. So, you got, like, a mother.
Yeah. You got a bacon mother. Yeah. It's like the mothership of bacon, right?
Yeah. And that stove and that bacon grease is probably personally responsible
for about 35 heart attacks.

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But I guarantee you it's one of the best breakfasts you ever ate.
Oh, you better believe it, especially with the Bloody Mary.
Absolutely. What you cooking at home? What's your staples to cook at home,
whatever, breakfast, dinner?
Man, I'll be honest with you. I cook about 3% of the time. My wife,
Courtney, she is a fantastic cook.

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When we were watching SportsCenter, she's watching Food Network.
And to be honest with you, she, her mom is a really good cook,
but she comes up with these cool recipes because you have young kids, you have young kids.
A lot of the time you got to get these kids to try different things and you
got to be creative with it.
And you're always in a hurry. Yeah, 100%. Baseball, football, gym, everything.

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But we eat a lot of red meat. We eat a lot of steak.
We eat a lot of venison.
I'd say we eat venison probably three times a week in the form of tacos, chili.
I haven't bought ground meat in a long time because we shoot a deer and bring
it here and eat venison for as much as we can.

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So same thing with bison. Before we got into deer hunting more,
it was like the bison stuff that I brought you guys. We eat a lot of that.
So we're pretty good about eating organic, eating stuff that we kill and going from there.
There so as for you ask for breakfast specifically
dr patel told me it'd be a good idea

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to not eat between 7 and 11 here's your
diet just don't eat yeah if you're gonna do fold over mayonnaise bread it's
better you just not eat at all so roni ron my little one he'll eat he'll eat
everything in the refrigerator for a little but we're not big breakfast people
unless we do breakfast for

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supper for example tonight we're having breakfast for supper we do
that a lot yeah and look shout out uncle brett rome's bacon right it's awesome
yeah he does a good job with it so we've been doing a lot of eggs and bacon
getting home late you know after sports or whatever if it's if you're getting
home at seven i don't want to be doing anything else other than eating and.

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Starting to hit the sack i agree tell me
more about your family i have before we
move from cooking styles i need to know about camp food and
specifically duck stuff okay so at
that same camp we referenced the uh the sour mash bacon
grease we we usually cook duck about three different ways we have a duck camp

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bo has been able to join us several times to get in some really good hunts and
fellowship but our staple there on saturday nights is we we pan fry some ducks
and then we We cook them down in some onions,
kind of like smother them, and serve them over rice.
And we just call it duck stuff. It's kind of like a mix between a stew and a gumbo, not as watery.

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But it's basically smothered down ducks. And look, you can say,
I love the way teal tastes, but you can bet your butt, if we put 10 teal in
a pot and 10 pounds of smoked sausages left, there'll be one teal and no smoked sausage left.
So we throw some smoked sausage in there with the teal, smother them down with

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some onions let them cook all day long and then eat that over rice and usually,
Usually, that's 90% of the time we eat it like that. We've been known to cook some fajitas.
We've been known to cut them up and cook like a jambalaya with them, like a duck jambalaya.
But me personally, and I'm sure Bo will agree, that duck stuff is something terrific.

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It's really good. And one time, or a few times, I thought, y'all don't put sweet
potatoes in it? Oh, yeah.
We'll stick some sweet potatoes inside the cavity of the teal.
I don't know. Look, it's really good, but I don't know if it's a combination
of it just being really good in general.
It's a Saturday night at the camp, too. You're at the camp.

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The mood is right. You got a couple cocktails in. You haven't eaten since you've
eaten the bacon grease at about 10 o'clock.
And you either went and baited alligator hooks or you went try to catch redfish
or you went work on a blind or you went move your decoys.
So if you spent the last six or seven hours working your butt off,
and then you come in, take a shower, fix you a whiskey drink,

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and you sit down to that food, man, it's hard to beat.
I'll be honest with you. Duck camp dinners, it's got to be, I'd say,
Momoa's Thanksgiving, 1A, duck camp dinners, 1B. Something about it, right?
Absolutely. It's hard to reproduce, too. Sometimes you have a bomb night at
the camp, and the next weekend you want to show off to your boys,

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and you invite some people over, and you try to recreate it,
and sometimes you just can't because you're not at camp.
There's a joke that says when you leave that gate, it just doesn't taste the same.
Yeah. When you pass through that gate. No, it's true. Just some magic.
Shane's cooked some amazing things at the deer camp before, and it's just random.
Them you like it's packages out of the freezer that aren't labeled and throw

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it in a pot and it's the best meal you ever had and you can't do it again yeah
ever same you got the same stuff yeah.
Who's in the kitchen at the camp? Do you like that part of it,
or do you just like to reap the rewards?
Man, I'm more of the guy fixing the old-fashioned to the whiskey drinks.
Okay. I'll be honest with you.
Look, if I'm there and there's nobody else in there, I'll step up and cook it.

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And that's kind of the cool thing. We use the same pot. The pot's been used a billion times.
You can't burn anything in it because it's so well-seasoned, right?
But there's kind of a hierarchy. You know who's better than others at it.
I'm about third or fourth on that list, but if my cousin Beaver,
he's the man. He's good with a spoon?

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Beaver knows his way around a pot, buddy. Look, there's a combination,
Beaver, and that beard shows a little.
I don't know. If Emeril grew a beard like Beaver, he wouldn't be able to be
stopped. It does look cooler when someone cooks with a beard.
Absolutely. And you know it's going to taste better.
Plus, this isn't a shot at Beaver because we're all shaped the same way,

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but we've all got the look, right? You know we can cook.
There's no skinny guys in the kitchen. You know what I mean?
So I bet you Dr. Patel couldn't cook like that. There's no way. Challenge accepted.
So it's duck camp dinners. I know there's a show called Duck Camp Dinners,
but I'll be honest with you.
It's duck camp, deer camp dinners, just camp dinners in general.

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It's hard to beat those. Yep.
You just can't break some of those traditions, too. No matter if it starts to
taste bad or what, you just need to hold on to it. Yeah, absolutely.
So you're doing the hunting and
fish, you, you, you mentioned redfish and alligators and all this stuff.
Do you have, are you actually attached to the, to the getting your own meat side of things?

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Or is that kind of just a, you know, a by-product of it?
I'll be honest with you. It's always been a big part of my personal beliefs
in hunting. I've always taken pride in eating everything that we shoot.
You don't want to, if we're not going to eat it, we're not going to catch it.

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If we're not going to eat it, we're not going to shoot it type of deal.
And look, that can be difficult when you travel abroad, right?
Because you go to Argentina and it's hard to eat doves that you shoot because
you're shooting a lot of them or it's hard to eat when you go to Africa.
But even when we've gone in the past, I've asked specifically,

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hey, chef, can you cook this?
Me and Paxton want to try it or me and so-and-so want to try it.
So to me personally, if it's, I'm real big on, Hey, if you're going to hunt
it, you're going to, you're going to harvest it.
We need to try to eat it. How do you feel about that? Same.
And I, I'm getting, I guess I'm building my attachment for it over, over the past few years.

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And it seems like, I don't know, for me, I've continued to like make hunting
and fishing harder and harder.
And I know you do the same. You, you're shooting a bow.
You know that's that's one element deeper that
you can make that connection to the to the meal you
know and maybe some people don't get it they don't
care about it but if that's what you're after it's it's

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there for you like the opportunity is there so do it if
that's what you want you know if you know if
you went walk 50 miles in a
week to get this elk or to get this whatever you
shot and it was with a bow and you
had to pack it out it i promise when you
sit down and you you watch your kids bite it you're gonna

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feel something right you get to tell the story of it
it's not you know it's a lot different than than buying packaged you
know packaged beef which we're in a funny relationship with that because we
love you know we grew up loving both we love this as a business but we also
spread sportsmanship and and hunting you know we want everyone to to to understand

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that they can do that. You know, you don't have to go,
You don't have to go get a pack of frozen patties. You can go hunt the animal,
bring it to a butcher, and see the whole process done.
So, man, we got tons of customers that do the same thing.
They're bringing us stuff year-round, whether they're going on public land or

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they're doing the one-time duck camp hunt a year, and they're bringing us a
bag of duck, and they want some summer sausage made.
They feel differently when they bite into that than
they do you know if if they hadn't worked hard
for it 100 look full circle one of the coolest things that i've witnessed and

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like you said i grew up where we ate this stuff but my seven-year-old ron he's
now eight but he shot his first deer when he was seven right and to see we shoot
a deer we bring it to you y'all process
it for us and that night we sit down i think courtney cooked tacos with the first time.
We sit down on the table and i said ron guess what he's like

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yes sir he goes i said this deer this is the deer that you shot like we're eating
the deer you shot we didn't have to go buy this you supplied our family with
this food because of of hunting and he you could kind of see a light bulb go
off and it says like man that's super cool like i i provided for my family by hunting
and hunting was a good thing right same thing

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with my daughter she was reluctant to hunt she look she understood all right
she loves hunting she loves being around animals but she was reluctant to be
the one to pull the trigger like she always wanted to be there but i guess she
was reluctant to pull the trigger and i just kind of explained to her like look.
We're gonna need meat we're gonna need food we're gonna need we're gonna her

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favorite food is spaghetti i said do you know how many spaghettis mom's gonna
be able to cook with this deer
and she she absolutely absolutely took joy
and pride in being able to provide our family with
spaghetti her favorite food so again i
think it's very important to tie that together i know a lot of people i have

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friends that say man i'm not trying to put that much work into hunting animal
i just want to go out there shoot an animal at 500 yards and i get to eat it
just like you do I think there is another step to,
hey, being there close and personal with the animal and shooting it with your bow.
And that's kind of where I stop. There's guys that look at me and like, man, you're a wuss.
Get you a long bow. Right. I'll get you a recurve. It's always a next step.

(22:32):
Right. Hey, y'all need to chill out with that chain because I never thought
about it that way that you're trying to make your life harder, but you are.
You know, you got tired of shooting deer. So you picked up a bow,
you got tired of catching fish that got too easy.
So you decided to jump in the water with a spear and try to do it that way.
It's that's what you thought was the best thing to do.

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Like we were talking about the other day, anxiety, like chasing an anxiety rush,
you know, that, that is a part of it.
And hopefully you can, you know, hopefully you can check that box and also pick
up some other boxes along the way, you know, things that, that make it important to you.
But like you're talking about, you can also tell Roan and your daughter that

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like, they're not just providing for y'all family.
Like think about what happens when they bring that deer to us,
you know, providing for us and then all of our employees, like we're paying
our employees with that.
We're buying, you know, local meat from other local meat vendors.
We're buying casings that the sausage is going to go into where we're buying

(23:38):
parts, Parts for the grinder, that all comes from, you know,
they play a part in that and people don't realize that.
But that's one more thing if you're looking for it, it's one more thing you
can feel good about. Absolutely. Absolutely.
So, and jumping in the water, shooting fish with a spear, I'm not there yet.

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And I see your videos and you look like the coolest person in the history of the world.
I'm just trying to look like the other cool people, man. Like,
Bear Grylls looks like the Dollar General version of Shane Thibodeau.
I just want to let you know that. Like, it's the coolest videos ever.
Man, there's some really cool guys around here that no one knows about.
And that's kind of what, you know, that's kind of what this is going to do,

(24:22):
going to be able to do for us, is kind of highlight some of our customers that
they're not on TV all the time. They're not being talked about all the time,
but they should be, you know.
Like yourself, like I, that's, that's how I look at you. And I've always been
impressed since the first time I met you with, you know, through Bo,
it was probably at a Ducks Unlimited event, I would assume.

(24:43):
But I, I, you know, I knew you were involved in it. I didn't really know how
you were involved, which we'll get into.
Cause I guess I still don't, but I just, I watched you coordinate those events
and I, I paid attention to just how much shit you had on your plate and how
much, how many different things.
And I just, I put myself in your shoes because I've ran smaller
events before then and it brings

(25:06):
it back to like that's an anxiety that's a
rush like to see all the work come
to fruition and to see the event you know what you
the videos you played in your mind on
how you wanted everything to go and you're able to to do it
like you're able to land it and when you can do that with
a room with 500 people like it's it's

(25:27):
something like it it means a lot more than writing a
check to ducks unlimited you know it's it's a just a
much deeper connection you have to what you're doing and yeah i've i've been
impressed with you since the day i met you and i i wanted to know more i want
to know how you balance all this stuff and and why you do it so what is what

(25:49):
is how did you get into the ducks unlimited stuff
so ducks unlimited man i'll be honest with you it was a unwritten rule in our family so.
The place that we were talking about earlier river rest i want to say we got
that place when i was about eight or nine years old that would have been 91
90 91 and it was the hunting was fantastic i mean every single person that went

(26:13):
you just there was so many ducks and i i vividly remember,
it was about the time I started being able to shoot on my own.
I was 12 or 13. I had a 20-gauge pump that I wanted at a DU event.
And I vividly remember my grandfather not allowing me to load that gun.
And we're sitting in the dug blind.

(26:34):
The sun's just coming up. It's shooting time. And there are 20 grays sitting
in the pond in the decoys as a flock of teal buzz in the decoys.
And I vividly remember my grandfather said, don't load your gun yet.
He said, I want you to just watch for about five minutes.
So we watched all the birds go by the decoys. And I mean, they're everywhere.

(26:57):
And you're a 12 year old with your own gun and you just started shooting. This is torture, right?
But he wanted me to see. And he told me, he said, I want you to see these ducks
and I want you to look at them. And I want you to appreciate them.
And I want you to know that there's ducks in our decoys because of Ducks Unlimited.
He said, that's a fact. He said, this doesn't just happen on its own. him.

(27:19):
He said, it's a lot of work that DU does.
And it's a lot of work that conservationists all over the country do in order
for us to have this resource in our blind. And I want you to remember that.
Now, 15 minutes went by and it didn't really mean much at the time,
but 20 years later, it's like, man, how powerful was that for him to be able
to have the hindsight to be able to teach me that.

(27:41):
And look, you didn't have to be in Ducks Unlimited in our family.
If you were a member of our family, you did not have to be in Ducks Unlimited,
but you wasn't going hunting, right?
Right? So you could, if you want to duck hunt, you better be in Ducks Unlimited.
And it was your responsibility, not his.
So you needed to go to a banquet and fill out a membership card and send it in, not him.

(28:02):
And he expected it. So very, very early on, it was, there was a tie between
duck hunting and Ducks Unlimited.
And he did that. And he did it for everyone in our family.
I remember being eight, nine years old and seeing him in the,
in the role that you were talking about earlier, running that banquet.

(28:25):
And I would just be in charge of selling some raffle tickets at the door because
I couldn't tell a kid no, right?
And selling $300 worth of raffle tickets and being proud of that.
And him making a big deal out of it, right? You sold $300 worth of raffle tickets
and that money's going to the breeding grounds in Canada to help create more
ducks to be in our decoys. So it was really tied together.

(28:49):
The hunting aspect, yeah, it's fun to hunt, super cool to hunt.
But if you don't give back to the resource, it won't be there forever.
And one day I want your kids to be able to hunt just like we're hunting now.
And Ducks Unlimited is a big part of the reason that happens.
So I don't even remember the question you originally asked me,
but that is kind of the start that I got with Ducks Unlimited.

(29:11):
He really tied it together for me to be able to see visually.
It's easy to tell somebody, right? Right. But when you visually see it and you
see it and it makes it mean something to you, then you kind of you fall in love with it.
And you try to do you try to do like your dad or your grandfather did.
And that's kind of how I got to be a part of Ducks Unlimited.

(29:32):
Yeah. And ducks are such a unique animal. You know, I guess you don't really
because they pass through three countries and all these states and there's all these flyways.
They need so much more management than
like say a deer you know you can have uh
500 acres or 100 acres or whatever and manage a

(29:53):
little deer population right that's why every state has
different rules for their their deer you know there's there's states that are
overrun with deer that you know cars are hitting them left and right and then
there's states where they're doing their best to to get more so ducks are a
little different because of the the just the territory that they

(30:13):
pass over and how many times they get shot at between Canada and Louisiana.
So yeah, it's super important that we manage them.
And look, to that point, that is part of what makes a duck special is the ties
that they have to another country, right? It's a continental thing.
You've got to rely on somebody in Canada to not mow their field or cut their

(30:37):
field down and keep the wetlands and not drain them in order for you to have
ducks in Thibodeau, Louisiana or Bellechase, Louisiana.
So it really ties us together. Same thing with the guys in Mexico.
I mean, the amount of teal, blue-winged teal that we get in Louisiana,
many of those ducks are going down to Mexico.
And look, they need a place to winter, just like the ducks that are coming from

(31:00):
up north need a place to winter. And it ties us together, whether we like it or not.
And it really is what makes ducks unique because of the continental ties.
So there's been some discussions about how Louisiana.
So every, a lot of people don't know this, but every year when you buy a duck

(31:21):
stamp in Louisiana, what they do is they take that pool of money,
it goes in front of the commissioners, and they decide what we're going to do with that money.
And over the course of the last 25 years, a majority of it, a big majority of
it has gone to Ducks Unlimited.
And it goes straight into the breeding grounds in Saskatchewan and the boreal

(31:43):
forest and all that stuff, which is where a majority of our ducks,
our local ducks here that are harvested come from.
And a couple of years back, I remember a guy asked me, he's like,
why is Louisiana's money going to Canada?
That's silly. That's stupid. Why wouldn't we use that money here?
It sounds silly if you don't know much. That's exactly right.

(32:05):
The reason is that mallet that you brought to Jeff W. to get mounted.
It got hatched in. It was hatched in Saskatchewan. So if you wouldn't have put
the work up there, you wouldn't have had the duck here.
And so a couple of years ago, you were, I'm guessing you were nominated for
the Ducks Unlimited National Board of Directors.

(32:28):
Correct. What's that mean? so DU has a board that is ran by volunteers I am
100% volunteer so if I travel to,
Washington DC for a meeting or I travel to Mississippi for a meeting or west
coast wherever it's on my dime that's really what makes DU special but it means
that these these board of directors are the ones that meet twice a year discuss

(32:51):
the the status of the organization organization where the money should be spent?
What are we focusing on?
All the way down to staff members or how many staff we feel we need in a certain
area. It's pretty much running the organization.
And my grandfather was on the board several years back.

(33:12):
I tell this story a lot, but my grandfather's only told me when he's proud of
me twice in my whole life. I know he's proud of me.
I know he's proud of me, but he's only told me twice in my life.
The first time, granted, I have an undergrad, a graduate. I got married. I had three kids.
None of those got an attaboy. Big deal. Yeah.

(33:32):
Everybody does that, right? Everybody does that.
First time was whenever I got nominated for state chairman in Louisiana.
When was that? that that was i got nominated in 2017
which at the time i was the youngest nominated state
chairman of all time i served in 2019
and y'all were a part of that at the house that year but i
was actually six weeks older than the young the youngest state chairman who

(33:56):
served in 1982 which was the year i was born a guy named eric byer anyway he
told me he's proud of me that day the day i got nominated i'll never forget
it and then the day that i got a phone call saying that I was nominated to the
national board. He told me he was proud of me.
So I got two attaboys from Ducks Unlimited, but nothing else.
So it kind of shows you how important it is to him and our family.

(34:17):
Have you served on the board yet?
So yeah, that's coming. No, no. I've been on the board in two different positions now.
I've served as an at-large director for three years because of COVID.
And then I got nominated as a regional vice president for two years.
And then I just got re-nominated about three weeks ago so now i'm a regional
vice president for ducks on lemonade,

(34:38):
which means i'm in charge of a flyway they call it region four i'm in charge
of louisiana mississippi and alabama nice so basically i communicate with the
state chairman and volunteers in those regions in order to try to promote fundraising
and volunteers and so on and so forth.

(34:59):
And look, it's a cool gig. You get to fly and meet and have meetings with similar-minded
people that care about conservation.
But I'll be honest with you, I'm a little unique in my age. I'm a lot younger
than the average board member.
But what else is cool is I still hold my local positions. Normally,
the life cycle of a DU member is member, volunteer, area chairman,

(35:24):
district chairman, state chairman, board of directors.
And you never really hold those positions at the same time
right now i'm a board of director i'm the
state treasurer for louisiana du i'm an
area chairman for thibodeau so i still hold basically
the top and the bottom positions and to be honest with you i feel i feel strongly

(35:45):
about the area chairman position and the difference that we're making on a local
level look thibodeau is at a national event whenever Thibodeau,
Louisiana is in the top 50 events in the country.
When you're talking about a town of 15,000 competing against Chicago, Illinois.

(36:05):
And that's because of, A, the people
that care in Thibodeau and the great community that we have around us.
So that part is pretty special to me.
And not to go too far on a tangent, but now it's kind of coming full circle, right?
My oldest son, Paxton, he's going to be a freshman at Edie White.

(36:27):
He came with me to the last national event. He turns to me in the middle of
the event. I'll never forget it.
And he said, Dan, I want to start an ED white chapter of ducks and lemon. And I said, yeah,
boy, I'm proud of you. Got something in both my eyes. And that was the first
time. That was the first time he told me.
It didn't mean anything that you made the soccer team or that you made 4.0,

(36:47):
but boy, I'm proud of you, that you want to do that on your own.
Excellent. Do you have a specific maybe end goal for your actions with DU?
Is there a specific, maybe a niche thing that maybe you're concerned with that other people aren't?
Man, I don't want to, look, at the end of the day, I'm kind of in it for the brand.

(37:10):
Whatever DU kind of needs me to do, I'm willing to do.
It's a privilege and an honor to be on the board, right?
And if I serve these two terms and they decide that they have someone that can
do the job better than me, I'm fine with that.
Obviously, I have a connection, being a little younger than the average board
member, I have a connection with the Green Wings, which is our youth members.

(37:34):
We put on that Kids Conservation Fest, which I'm sure we'll get into,
but it really, I really have a tie to that.
And there's a position called senior of youth and education that kind of oversees
all of the youth and education, youth events and high school events and college
events for the entire organization.
And I would love to serve at that position if it would come up,

(37:55):
but it's not something I'm gonna, it's not something that you actively campaign
for per se, but it's kind of like, hey, if there's.
If I think that I can step up and make a difference in it and the organization
does also, then let's do it.
But if I feel like if somebody else can do a better job than me,
then that's also fine with me.

(38:17):
Again, I'm kind of in it for the brand. I want what's best for the organization.
And it's a commitment. Look, you've been in charge of QDMA in our local area.
I tell people the local bank takes about 40 hours of work of planning and putting things in together.
Other to be on the board it's about 400 hours of work so it's it's a going down

(38:39):
the road instead of calling your buddy to see where you want to go fishing this
weekend it's hey let me call the state chairman in alabama and see what he's
got going on if he has any problems kind of deal.
So going back to one of your first thoughts was or one of your first questions
was how do you do it how do you have the time how do you have the resources
and to be honest with you it's it's same reason that you you guys are successful

(39:00):
in business it's the team around you right my wife sometimes has to take a kid
to practice that she normally wouldn't have or my committee,
has to have a meeting without me because of here or there again
it's it's really the people around you that make it able for you to be able
to do it yes i'm the face of the tibeto chapter but you guys know especially
you boo you know how many guys show up and and putting together tricycles or

(39:24):
or putting out silent auction bid sheets and stuff like that.
It's really the guys around you that make it happen.
Yeah, well, and that might be true for the grunt work, but, man,
the hardest part of those organizations and keeping them alive is keeping those
volunteers, well, finding volunteers,
then keeping them interested over, dude, you've been the Thibodeau chairman

(39:47):
for I don't know how many years now, And you still have a great group of guys that are still gung-ho.
And, yeah, I don't know how you do that.
I think it's the beer. I think it's the beer at the event.
Quantity or quality? Look, we've kind of gone, we've grown through the years. We've lost some guys.

(40:09):
It's a commitment, right? But it's really, the cool thing about it is it's the
guys that, A, they have to believe in the mission.
So I've been a chairman for Thibodeau for about 13 years now.
Originally, it's all your friends. So you step into the role and your friends
step up and like, man, I want to help Nick out. He's my boy.
But then it becomes deeper than that. Those guys kind of erode away.

(40:32):
And you got to find guys that believe in the mission and that believe in the
work, right? Because at the end of the day, it is work.
But like you said, at the end of that banquet night, when you're sitting there
and you're just seeing the dollars that we raise, it's an adrenaline rush. It absolutely is.
And there's nothing more. Or, like I said, when you go to a national level and

(40:54):
you see, man, Thibodeau was 50th out of 4,500 chapters, it's a big deal. And it makes you proud.
And then we share that with the chapter. And those guys absolutely love being
part of it because at the end of the day, they know they're making a difference.
You know what I mean? You guys have been great to Ducks Unlimited for probably

(41:15):
all 13 years now. Now, a lot of times you guys have your own lives going on
and you're not there to make every committed meeting.
I see your faces every now and then. But when it comes down to it,
you guys have given Thibodeau Chapter of Ducks Unlimited more support than just about anybody.
I mean, in terms of hamburgers for Kids Conservation Fest or tomahawk ribeyes

(41:37):
for our event that are always popular.
I don't think you guys have ever told me no. And I try not to ask too much because
I know how much you guys do, but
it's the guys like you that are making a difference. I mean, it really is.
Again, I can take the credit because I have the face, but I won't because it's
really the guys that are...
Making look i can't sell tomahawk ribeyes without tomahawk

(41:59):
ribeyes and those things make 12 1500 bucks
every event for the ducks and that's coming
straight from you guys and then look there's probably 20
people like you guys that help us out every year and that's that's really what
makes tibeto special right because we are such a small town but we just figure
out how to get it done we're not selling a f-250 at our event for 25 000 and

(42:22):
and that's it we're selling 40 items at $2,500.
So, yeah. We were actually talking about something earlier.
I think we got a pretty cool deal for you at maybe a future event. Maybe the EDY chapter?
No, bigger. All right. This has to be really big. State. State. National level. Okay.

(42:45):
All right, Bo, you tell them. You want to say it right now? We'll just say it
right now. That way it puts the pressure on us to come through with it. Perfect.
Okay. Okay, so we're going to, we have toyed with the idea of hosting like a
restaurant style meal here, but just one table and just one group of people.

(43:06):
Shane and I are going to cook and there's not going to be a menu.
It's going to be whatever we cook.
And you get a tour of the building. You get to see everything.
And you're going to eat on that butcher table standing up. I love it.
This could be some good food.
It's a next level guy's night. How many people are we talking about?
I'm thinking a dozen tops. Yeah.

(43:26):
All I know is whoever buys it, I'm going to be one of the 12. Yeah.
Let's see. No, that's sick, dude. I'm going to be one of the 12.
I love it. I love the idea. We've been thinking about it for a while,
and I think it's something we can make pretty special. No, that's awesome. Yeah.
It's a unique, one-of-a-kind. Can't find it anywhere else. Right.
And I'll go out on a limb and say, I got $1,000 on it, starting bid.

(43:48):
So you got to beat that. I'm pretty sure we can go up to like five.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'll put $1,000 on it.
I'll put $1,000 on it so my wife don't kill me.
But, hey, if it starts something cool, then it does. No, I think it's a great
idea. I love it. Well, there it's said. That way, now we have to do it.
The Ducks appreciate it, and so do I. Y'all know that. You know it's coming

(44:09):
up in November, right, Shane?
We'll start next year. Nope. Podcast is going to be out before then.
But you mentioned Kids Conservation Fest. So, I don't know, five,
six, seven years ago now, Nick came up with kind of a brilliant idea.
So, there's a number of conservation groups in the area, for example,

(44:32):
Ducks Unlimited, but also CCA, Delta Waterfowl, and all these others.
And a lot of times there's, I don't want to call it bad blood between the two,
but more like a competition.
And Nick came up with the brilliant idea of teaming everybody up and throwing
a huge event at the children's museum every year.

(44:52):
So remind me, Nick, it's DU, it's CCA.
It's kind of changed throughout the years, depending on how strong the local chapters are.
We had some battles with COVID and we lost a chapter here, lost a chapter there. Then it came back.
But over the years, the people that have been involved is Ducks Unlimited,
CCA, Coastal Conservation Association, Quality Deer Management Association,

(45:14):
which I think is now just NDA, Delta Waterfowl.
And then we've kind of had some smaller groups get together.
NoNet Outdoors was there earlier, which was trying to get kids off of internet
and bring them outdoors.
413 Outdoors, which is a Christian disabled hunter-style organization that comes and be a part of it.

(45:36):
And then this year we've had Blue Boot Rodeo come be a part of it,
which was an absolute blessing.
So over the year, long story short, man, it's been anywhere between six and
eight different organizations locally, with the big groups being CCA,
Ducks Unlimited, and Delta Waterfowl.
And i can't take credit for the event entirety our local cca chairman mr lance trotty he and i were,

(46:03):
hanging out one day and trying to brainstorm
how we can get a kids event bigger in our area home of ducks unlimited had the
longest standing green wing event in the state the youth event in the state
and it just kind of became stagnant a little bit it was like 30 30 years running
and And they would bring the kids to the rifle range, let them shoot .22s and

(46:23):
shotguns and stuff like that.
And every year it was kind of less and less and less and less.
And we saw an opportunity to try to team up with Something Fun,
the Children's Museum, and try to get the kids out there and just get them outdoors.
I don't know if you went over it, but basically the idea of the event was to
get kids off of phones, cell phones, iPads, TVs, and teach them something about

(46:47):
the outdoors where hopefully it would get hooked.
But man, over the years, I think, don't quote me on this, but I think we've had seven of them.
Over the years, we've averaged about 300 kids at an event.
You do simple math, it's over 2,000 kids that we've been able to let shoot a
BB gun or teach a blow a duck call or teach them what a speckle trout look like.

(47:10):
Yeah, so the volunteers from all these organizations set up these booths.
So it might be like an archery booth where you get to shoot a bow and arrow.
They'll have some guys come out and do like a dog, like a retriever demonstration
and a ton of fun for the kids.
Kids it look going back to
ducks unlimited real quick i wear a lot of different hats as

(47:30):
y'all heard but this event is truly the
coolest event that we put on and see i'm pretty sure cca delta would tell you
the same thing and again this little event in tibet louisiana has been the number
one kids event for ducks unlimited for like the last six years right and i would
guess it's It's also the biggest for the other ones too. Biggest for CCA, biggest for Delta.

(47:53):
And the way it works is basically we go out, we allow these kids to come,
we teach them about outdoors, and then we give them a membership to each participating organization.
So the kids will come, they'll have a DU membership, a Delta membership,
and a CCA membership that came this year.
And then all year long they receive magazines or
stickers and stuff like that just continues to promote not only

(48:15):
outdoors but specifically conservation and the way it ties to outdoors and the
way we need to give back in order to keep the resource i would be remiss if
i don't say that after our third year originally it was called kids conservation
fest yeah super cool name You said Jackie Bartels.
Yeah. Well, after the third year, my grandmother passed away about three weeks before our event.

(48:40):
And we jumped through hoops, but we got it changed in time. And we renamed it
the Jackie Bartels Kids Conservation Fest, which is my grandmother.
And she was the biggest proponent of kids and outdoors and conservation being all tied together.
So really cool way to honor her. and i
think i well i know that she would
be proud of the work that us three individuals in

(49:03):
this room have been able to accomplish with getting kids
in front of outdoors and teaching them about conservation and we could spend
an entire podcast just talking about your grandfather and grandmother but your
grandma was a hell of a hunter in her own right that she would go on these hunting
trips with your grandpa right and it's sometimes by herself sometimes he would

(49:23):
be busy with work and And she says, okay, I'm going.
I'm not waiting on you. That's amazing. And...
Tell me how this goes. She's right-handed, went blind in her right eye,
so taught herself how to shoot left-handed. That is correct.
She can shoot a lot better than me left-handed.
Well, I don't know about that, but she had macular degeneration in her eyes,

(49:46):
and she had to teach herself to switch sides about, I don't know,
about seven or eight years before her death.
And she taught herself how to shoot opposite hand and opposite eye in order
to keep hunting. And something really cool came out of that.
We didn't really talk about it. I don't talk about it a lot.
But she saw an opportunity,

(50:07):
again, to have children come that have been blind since birth to the trophy
room where all the animals and stuff are and visit the animals and feel the
animals. And she called it Sensory Safari.
So basically, the opportunity is the kids come.
They come to the house. They feel the lion's mane. They feel iguana or feel a bear.

(50:34):
And 90% of them have been blind since birth, and they get to see with their
hands. And they called it Sensory Sephora.
So that came about because of the macular degeneration. So same thing with my
grandfather teaching us about conservation.
She was able to use a bad thing and turn it into a great thing, right?
And it was super cool the way she was able to tie that with her...

(50:57):
Going blind in her right eye. Dang. Man, I'm so curious as to how they got started with this, you know?
I'll be honest, which is she, my grandfather hunted. I asked this question several
times. Like, why Ducks Unlimited?
Why, why Sephora hunting?
Why CCA? And my, and my grandfather has been a part of every single conservation

(51:20):
organization in the world.
Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to National Wild Turkey Foundation. foundation.
Anything to do with conservation and hunting, I promise you he's part of it.
And he made us a part of it.
But I asked him one day, I said, why, where did you get to love the hunting?
He said, Nick, I grew up hunting.
I grew up in a small town in Iowa and that's all we really had.
He said, ever since a young, very young age, we didn't, we didn't really play sports.

(51:45):
We didn't really, when it was finished time to finish working on the farm,
we went out and went hunting.
It i would ride my bike 10 miles to go to the
nearest bayou and and hunt
something i don't know if there's bayous in iowa but i guess
it would be a river but he he always had a love affair with hunting and then
she kind of fell in love with it and what what really makes my grandfather special

(52:10):
and my grandparent my grandparents special excuse me is they always attached
it they always saw the other side of,
hey, let's tie it to conservation. Let's realize we need to give back.
So it wasn't all about just taking, it was all about giving back.
And lots and lots and lots of folks hunt, right?
I think with them being able to be big conservationists is what really made it special.

(52:36):
And it really, it kind of tied it to them wanting to do more.
Like, hey, if we go over here, their portal organization is called Sephora Club International.
So they took part in this thing called Blue Bag Project, not to go off on a
tangent, but Blue Bag Project.
Project, all these people were going to foreign countries, Zimbabwe,

(52:58):
Tanzania, South Africa, there's three that we've gone to and we've done it.
But it was like, man, you're going to South Africa. Why not take this blue duffel
bag, fill it up with all kinds of cool stuff that the people need over there
and just check it as another bag.
It's going to cost you 55 bucks on United and bring it with you.
So we did that. Again, the most recently when Paxton was nine,

(53:19):
so five years years ago we went to South Africa where we
filled the blue bag with some of it is
school books and band-aids and neosporin but
some of it's cool stuff like soccer balls or sunglasses and stuff like that
and it and I got to see my nine-year-old hand out supplies to these guys in
Africa went to orphanage and the kids loved it and Paxton realized very quickly

(53:42):
that kids in South Africa are really good at soccer right that's not it's not E.D.
White's not the best soccer team in the world his kids play soccer 10 hours
a day but it was cool to be able to see him interact and look that came from
a different organization that we haven't talked about safari club international.
So it was as they grew in the organizations and as the it kind of went hand

(54:05):
in hand like man you know if we go hunt here we can do this and tie it to this
also let's do it so it kind of just turned into a snowball per se like man let's
go out and try to do some more other stuff yeah and And he'll never forget that.
No, absolutely not. It was super rewarding.
It was kind of the first time in his life, he's nine at the time,

(54:26):
where we walk in this orphanage and he sees their beds.
And their pillows have basically no feathers in the pillow. It's basically a
pillowcase that they're sleeping on.
And he turns and looks at me. He's like, Dad, is that where they sleep? I was like, absolutely.
He's like, man, I couldn't imagine sleeping like that.
And it just, look, that's another benefit of going hunting. and you get to see

(54:46):
and impact people around the world.
And it's not just about hunting. And it made a difference. I guarantee you it
made a difference in his life. He came home a different kid after that trip.
So, again, I think hunting, how did they get into hunting?
They got into hunting because they saw the good that came out of it.

(55:07):
Another aspect you can look at, and you talked about earlier,
how they harvest an animal and how many different people it impacts.
Same thing with hunting over there. I mean, not only do you impact the people
that the PH hires, the chefs, the trackers, the skinners, the camp people,
the people that make your beds every day, but you also impact the animals.
Because a lot of the money that is spent in that area on that trophy fee goes

(55:31):
into the conservation of those animals.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that? What's everyone missing or
what do they need to hear? Because it doesn't matter what you say.
You know, you're going to find the people that they just can't get past the you did this mentality.
So I don't know. Talk a little bit more about that. Maybe some questions that

(55:54):
people ask you on the road. voter.
I'm sure you have been the blunt of a lot of the questions, right?
Yeah. Look, if I knew the answer to that, I'd probably be president.
I don't know the answer to that. I don't, some people, and you come across all
different paths of lives, right?
And people have opinions. That's what makes everybody, that's what makes it fun.
But at the same time, some people are deeper thinkers. Some people just take stuff on the surface.

(56:20):
Man, if you give me, it's funny because I don't remember where we were.
I think it was in Arkansas.
And I think it was the year I was state chairman. And there was a group that
came up called Flyway Federation.
And it talked about the flooding of the cornfields and the ducks and stuff like that.
And again, not to get into that, but basically I spent five minutes telling,

(56:45):
explaining the conservation aspect to this guy.
Like, this is why we do what we do. This is the science behind it.
This is what our research church tells us.
And I remember walking away and the guy I was with, he goes,
man, you sound like a Baptist preacher at a revival for those five minutes.
So it's not a secret. I try to preach it everywhere I go. But a lot of it is

(57:06):
just being able to connect with somebody and explain it.
Because look, just like in politics, you hear something on Fox News or CNN,
and you can only take it for surface value.
There's some people that, man, I don't know if I truly believe that.
Let me do a little research on it.
And then there's people that say, man, I saw on Fox News that this is going
to happen and the world's over. You know what I mean?

(57:27):
So it's the same thing with this. It's there is so much the biggest,
coolest quote I'm going to say all day.
The biggest conservationists in the world are hunters. Yes.
That's a fact. There's no debate in that because hunters do so much for the
wildlife, for the habitat, for everything.

(57:48):
So the biggest conservationists in the world are hunters. That's good.
And yeah, there almost needs to be no other argument, right?
I agree with you. The next time somebody says something like that,
I'm going to say, well, how much have you given to help the animals?
Because I at least bought a duck stamp this year.
That's right. Right. The year that I was state chairman, Ducks Unlimited had a big, big push.

(58:12):
We put signs up at all the boat launches.
And it was a big deal about us not having ducks and all that kind of thing.
But the sign was simple and it was powerful.
Had a DU logo right in the middle. And at the top it said, before you complain, what have you done?
And it basically said, man, you can complain about not shooting ducks,

(58:35):
But what have you done in order to fix the resource?
So and it kind of it kind of inspired people to like man, I need to do something
It doesn't matter what you do whether you believe what Delta does believe what
CCA does I believe what do you does do something?
You have to do something in order to continue the resource.
What's in your opinion? What is the enemy against their resources?

(58:56):
Like what would it what's the you?
What's what's the use rival?
Dee's rival, I think it would be more geography-based.
Very simple answer in Louisiana, and I'm sure y'all know it, it's erosion.
I mean, we're losing so much land in Louisiana, and it's a nonstop battle.

(59:16):
Louisiana's special to Ducks Unlimited, and we spend probably five times more
than what we raise in Louisiana because the biologists realize,
man, we're losing so much habitat for these ducks.
We need to put more money into terraces, for example.
Terraces are a huge thing in south louisiana because it reduces wave action it reduces the

(59:38):
banks eroding explain what that is
a terrace yeah so terraces guys go
out there with a big swamp backhoe they dig
up the dirt in the bottom of the the water and they
build basically jagged levees inside
big bodies of water and the idea is if
winds blowing non-stop and these waves are getting bigger and

(01:00:00):
bigger and bigger and by the time they hit the the the beach
or the the bank it's eroding
more and more so if you can reduce that wave action by building
little levees inside of it and keeping that wave action down
you'll slow the erosion on
the bank itself and it's it's been proven to be
very very very very successful

(01:00:23):
they go in there they build
these levels levees and then they plan them and that instead
of having a one wave going across 600 feet of water and then hitting the bank
super hard you go 50 feet and it crashes so when I go to the the Wellness Center
at a Civic Center and at the Thibodeaux banquet and I bid 6,000 on the butchers night that money.

(01:00:50):
I can believe that that money is going to be going to a project such as that.
It'll be going to something that is going to benefit possibly my kids if they know how to duck on it.
A hundred percent. I can show you right now, Louisiana probably has about 12
different projects going on in South Louisiana.
And about two weeks ago, the guy that's the biologist that's in charge of projects

(01:01:13):
in Louisiana, he listed out about 40 that are coming up. So that's money in our backyard.
I mean, a lot of them in Terrebonne and Lafourche Parish.
I get asked a lot of times, man, what does Ducks Unlimited do for us in our local area?
Well, obviously, my first, I point to the Grand Bayou Project right there in Pontchart.
You can go over there and catch a speckled trout, and then the next cast,

(01:01:36):
catch a bass, and then go out there and shoot a limit of ducks.
Well, that whole project was done by Ducks Unlimited.
They levied it off. They created freshwater systems with water control structures
and allowed public to hunt it.
I mean, you can go out there any day during duck season and hunt that.
And it's open to every single person that has a duck stamp and a license.

(01:01:58):
So two things. First, well, I have my own opinions on how to – we're in a losing
battle against erosion.
I think the only thing that's going to fix it is allowing more freshwater and
flooding, unfortunately, which
is maybe not doable, but that's beside the point. My question for you is.

(01:02:19):
What it, when, when Shane asked you, what do you biggest enemy is?
I'm thinking like, what are the ducks biggest enemy?
Is it habitat loss? Is it hunters?
Is it, what is it? Why, why are there fewer ducks? Habitat loss and,
and, and increasing of population.
So we definitely have habitat loss happening down here. Is that happening throughout all the flyways?

(01:02:42):
And it's yes, but it's in different aspects. So down here, obviously it's erosion,
but not only erosion, but like, Like, say, let's go to Saskatchewan where the breeding grounds are.
These farmers are flooding and preparing land for forming.
So you have a huge pond, three acre pond that hosts ducks to mate and make little

(01:03:05):
ducks every single year.
They use that pond during the summer.
As soon as it starts getting cold, they fly down south.
Farmer says, man, I need to put I want more money in my pocket or I need to
make more money off of my crops. How do I do it? it. I add more land.
Well, man, you can have a piece of a pond that's sitting there doing nothing,
or you fill it in, you turtle back in and then you plant whatever in it, wheat in it.

(01:03:30):
And all of a sudden you increase your revenue. So we battle that a lot.
The way we battle it is we put easements on things. So basically we go out and
we find a piece of property that is a wetland.
We buy it we put an easement
on saying hey we you cannot fill this
pond in for 30 years and then we sell it back

(01:03:51):
to people so that du doesn't have to hold the property
itself but we're we're selling it back to folks
same thing you can look in tibetan
louisiana i'll use an example not to take a shot and
i don't know who owns the property but i lived on the west side of town for
a long time and there was that sugar mill right there and there would be tons
and tons and tons of ducks between the sugar mill in my house that would hang

(01:04:16):
out in the pond and the ditches the overflow ditches and a lot of times you'd
see them drinking out of those big water wells.
Guess what's there now? That new neighborhood right there behind the gas station right there.
Now there's, where there used to be a lot of ducks, there's 300 homes.
Now, I'm not saying that ducks are more important than humans,

(01:04:38):
but what I'm saying is it's a constant battle.
It's a constant struggle in order to make both of them work.
And without organizations like DU, it would be, I mean, think about how much
worse it would be. Exactly.
Another thing people don't take into account is, I don't know if you want to
call it climate change or whatever, but we had that big drought last year, that's last summer.

(01:05:00):
That's terrible for ducks, obviously. Weather is a big part of it,
especially in the breeding grounds.
Some of the things that the big hunters that are associated with our organization,
they want to know what's the weather like in the breeding grounds.
They ask all the DU Canada guys that, what's the weather like?
What's the weather like? Because they know, look, if we don't have water, we don't have ducks.

(01:05:20):
That is a constant battle. Those are some of the things that we can't control.
Obviously, DU can't control weather.
But what we can control is, so what's kind of changed in the last year or two
in Ducks Unlimited is we've been able to positively affect water in general.

(01:05:41):
And we talked about the human aspect versus the ducks.
DU's, what's starting to happen is these government agencies are starting to
realize, man, when DU does a project for wetlands in this area,
all of a sudden the water quality in towns south of that area has increased.
The water quality has become better because of the wetlands.

(01:06:01):
You know it. They say a wetland acts like a filter, right?
So there's been research about us doing a project and everything downstream
of that, the water quality absolutely increases.
And that's where these towns are getting their water from.
So in turn, what's happened now is organizations that
are just concerned with water they don't care about a duck at all they've

(01:06:23):
hired us and said look we want you to do
a project in this area and increase our water and it's
kind of been a different aspect the ducks and lemon we've always okay we we
love the water and we want great water for everybody we've always focused on
ducks but that's kind of a byproduct of what we've been doing that's so cool
and especially if they'll put up a few dollars i mean well that's That's the

(01:06:44):
trade-off, like, hey, government municipality
has a lot of dollars and all of a sudden we can affect more wetlands.
Just to put it, just to kind of see what's happening.
I think four years ago, we had 300,000 acres that we've influenced in a calendar year.
300,000 acres in one year, which is a huge number, right?

(01:07:04):
At the national convention about four weeks ago in San Diego,
for the first time ever, Ducks Unlimited can serve a million acres in a single calendar year.
And the big reason why is because now these different organizations are giving
us money because they know that we know how to take care of it.
We know how to do the work. our science tells us this is really this is doing

(01:07:26):
great things for not only ducks and hundreds of different type of birds but
also now humans so now you're getting into the aspect of man if we can if we
can we can put up a million dollars increase our water quality.
Absolutely we want to do that here ducks unlimited please go
out and do projects in our area and they trust us to do
it so it's just kind of a byproduct of

(01:07:49):
the work that ducks unlimited does us ducks are
regulated federally yes when you buy a
duck stamp what's that money doing for you
so ducks same thing with so there's
a grant called naca north american wetland conservation
act and basically it's a match so for
every dollar that ducks unlimited gets from louisiana duck

(01:08:11):
stamps it's matched three to one and that
money can be used at the discretion of ducks unlimited limited
same thing on a national level when when
money like that's given to ducks unlimited we try to go out and match
it no matter if it's chances are they're going to take the six thousand dollars
that you guys put up at this butcher block dinner they're going to turn around
use that money to match and then do a project and so your six thousand dollars

(01:08:34):
now becomes eighteen thousand dollars so really powerful tools because the government
knows man these guys know what they're They're doing,
we trust them with our money and we know they're going to do the right thing with it.
So this, that, that leads me into a, an interesting question,
in my opinion, what's, where's the trade-off or where's like the,
the balance between, you know, before you hit like an, an oversaturation of hunters, right?

(01:08:59):
You want more hunters and you want, you want to preach the word and you want
everyone to be a Ducks Unlimited member and you want to buy a bunch of duck
stamps to, to do better for the ducks.
But what happens? Do you want everyone to duck hunt?
I mean, no. Obviously, the science tells you, man, this is how many ducks we can harvest.
So there's a bunch of guys way smarter than me. What their tool is to set the

(01:09:22):
limits for Louisiana. So Louisiana sets their limits.
60 days and six ducks is what it's been for like the last five, six, seven years.
But one of those variables in that equation is hunters, numbers of hunters.
So you've got a pool of ducks. This is how many ducks we want to harvest per
day. This is how many days. This is how many hunters.

(01:09:43):
So one of those variables is hunters. Obviously, if we get, say,
everybody in the mountain goes get a duck stamp, and all of a sudden you've
got five times the amount of duck hunters in Louisiana, obviously the science
tells us, man, we need a limited number of ducks that each hunter can shoot.
And we try to let science dictate that, right? Right.
We, we let the science tell us what it is. And, and just to be clear,

(01:10:06):
DU doesn't set the, it's not DU that's setting these limits. Right.
It's the wildlife commission and guys like Larry Reynolds that are flying over
the wetlands and doing duck surveys and duck counts and stuff like that in order
to tell us how many ducks that we can harvest.
So, so you understand that if you get everyone involved in duck hunting,
then the limits might go down.

(01:10:26):
It's yeah. Yeah. Is that what you're okay with that? Or do you want,
do you want to save it? You know, do you want to save it for the crew?
I'll be honest with you.
If you, if you give me three ducks per person, we can make a mean duck stuff
at River Red. You know what I mean? Yeah. Give me three, two every day of the week.
You know what I mean? Like, look, it's kind of the speckle trial.

(01:10:47):
So yeah, if you double the number of hunters and half the limit,
I mean, that's a lot more money coming in for conservation too.
Absolutely. So it could have a net positive effect.
I mean, there's folks that go out there and just, they want to get their limit.
And I get it. It's a sense of pride. It's a sense of accomplishment.
Especially the paid hunters and the paid fishermen. Absolutely.

(01:11:08):
Like they're coming, they just changed the speckle trout limits.
Yep. To 15. And guess what? I'm sure those charter captains are loving it. Right?
They're going to have more successful trips. trips do
you feel like if i go out there and only caught 15 trout
instead of 25 trout that was man that was a waste of a day i
mean i don't think anybody feels like that same thing with

(01:11:30):
ducks you go out there and you you see that sunrise there's been many a day
that i've hunted and didn't fire a shot in fact bo's probably been with me on
a couple of those hopefully not too many but too many buddy but he will everybody
that's out there and he'll agree with me watching Watching that sunrise come
up, talking to your friends.
That's what it's about. Hanging out with your dog.

(01:11:51):
I mean, that's what it's about. It's not about shooting the ducks.
What's it like watching someone shoot their first duck when you put them on
it? I mean, it's the coolest thing ever. And it's...
There's more joy in that than you shooting yourself. And I know everybody would
say that, but it's, it's not only more, it's probably 10 times more, right?
It's funny how when people get really good at things and they do something for

(01:12:13):
long enough, it always leads to that.
It always leads to your happiness is from someone else's happiness.
You know, watching them shoot the first duck, you know, what's going to happen
the first morning that Paxton wakes up and,
and he's cooking the, he's got the bacon grease going, one
you know that's gonna that's gonna feel some type of way absolutely absolutely

(01:12:34):
i want you to teach me how to shoot my first fish sure on your boat i can only
i can only hold my breath like 45 seconds i still owe you a trip yeah you do
i didn't forget shane did buy a boat yeah and uh part of the deal was one snapper
trip every year with the boys yeah that's true i think we're like
what three behind now and i'm pretty it's only been a year has it yeah oh i

(01:13:00):
cried myself to sleep for like the last first 30 nights you've been busy also
you know where it's at you can come get it anytime you want i appreciate that
i'm just glad somebody's getting use of it hey a lot of use.
A lot of use i'm pretty sure in this last year you use
it more than i did in the last seven 100 yeah
but here's the real question how many fish has that

(01:13:20):
boat caught since you've had it it's been a bloody boat
no no you misunderstand me oh
no caught still the boat still not in the
water we we've caught a lot i get about during the peak season like some middle
of summertime i'll get about 10 phone calls a week man i just saw you going
down canal boulevard where you going fishing when'd you buy it why are you why

(01:13:45):
are you driving on the median why'd you buy a dodge,
so so i don't know i kind of want to hear some maybe some hunting stories.
I want to hear a cool hunting story. I want to hear a story about something I don't know about.
Again, we're going to have to have Nick on two more times because maybe three,

(01:14:06):
because I want one with just hunting stories because he's got thousands, I'm sure.
And the other is we haven't even gotten into his family business yet.
Actually, that's good. Let's go there first. But we're on hunting.
Yeah, but it would be funner. But I've been one to ask Nick this question.
Okay, your grandfather has hunted every animal that I can name and most of them

(01:14:29):
that I can't, and he's got more world records than I can name animals,
and the question is the same for you, but why ducks? ducks.
Obviously he loves hunting just about anything, but, and maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe you'll be like, oh no, he likes hunting elephants more. I don't know.
But to me, I feel like he loves ducks more than any other animal. True or false?

(01:14:54):
So shockingly for him, it's false. He loves, he loves sheep hunting.
He's a, he's a huge sheep hunter. Okay.
For me, it's absolutely positive. and if you've
been listening this long you know why because we can
talk while we're duck hunting right and i don't shut up look
for me i'll start with me personally duck

(01:15:15):
hunting is my favorite because of the fellowship because of
a we can do what we're doing right now on a duck blind i tell you i tell this
to everybody you find out everything about a man in 10 minutes on duck blind
you tell how genuine that man is where's his heart at how's he feel about certain
things and what type of person he is.

(01:15:36):
And I truly believe that duck hunting to me is, it's less about hunting, more about fellowship.
My grandfather, he took a liking to sheep hunting.
I don't know what it is. He's not a very nimble guy.
I mean, he's been a 6'4", 285 guy for 40 years. When you said he didn't play

(01:15:58):
sports, I figured he missed his calling for the University of Iowa football.
Well, he ended up going to, when he was in farming or whatever,
he ended up moving to Canton, Mississippi.
And he played four sports. So he went from no sports to four.
Played football baseball basketball and track
and then he ended up playing football for mississippi state

(01:16:19):
well shit see so he he's one
of those corn-fed boys that just were good on the offensive line
but he loved sheep hunting and i
think the reason he loved it because it was huge challenge for
him so hard yeah from what i understand that's that's the
pinnacle that's that's the hardest animal to kill it's
it's tough and it's it's not tough because of

(01:16:40):
love their eyesight or their smell and
stuff like that it's tough because of where they live right i think
i don't think you would love sheep hunting as much as my grandfather did
because you're you're very athletic and
nimble and and can climb those rocks like it wasn't anything where him he had
to work his butt off to get up there i mean he's a 300 pound man at six four

(01:17:01):
trying to hide from sheep on a on an incline at 10 000 feet up in the air so
for him it was a challenge and most people people,
once they spot it, if they spot it, they will probably say,
well, there's no way I can get it after, so I'm not shooting it.
But I'm assuming he's the type of person to say, well, we'll worry about that
after the shot. Hold my beer and watch this.

(01:17:23):
No, he, he, he prided himself on being able to take some longer shots.
That was kind of his deal where mine's more of bow. I want to get up close and personal.
If I can get 10, 10 yards away, I want to try to get seven type of deal where
he was, hey, you get me inside of 600 and I got it.
And not only that, but, hey, I'm going to be able to maneuver myself around these mountains.

(01:17:46):
So his favorite was actually sheep hunting, and he did a lot of it.
And what's cool, I guess cool isn't the word, but what's unique is I hate sheep hunting.
Like, I'll do it, but— For the same reason that he likes it, because it's hard?
No. I mean, I love a challenge. That's kind of why I love elk hunting with a bow.
It's a challenge, but some of it is, I'll be honest with you,

(01:18:10):
they don't taste very good.
And it goes back to our first conversation about eating everything we hunt.
They're not just, you can eat them, and I've done it, but they're not great.
You put an elk versus a bighorn sheep, I mean, there's going to be no comparison.
But did you try to cook it like duck stuff? No, I didn't.
Maybe we need to try that. Let's go shoot a sheep and cook it down in some onions

(01:18:32):
and stuff it with a sweeper tape. I got to shoot it.
I'll let you shoot it since you like the rifle thing, and then we'll cook it
together. How about that? You don't want to get seven yards away?
And then shoot it with a rifle. That would be really tough. I'll shoot it with
a rifle first so you can get close. I like that. That's a good idea.
Teamwork, baby. Makes the dream work. Nick says he likes to get close to animals to shoot.

(01:18:55):
And that reminds me, I watched Nick on TV get way too damn close to a bear before he shot it.
Man, that was a cool hunt. That was with Jim Shockey.
And that bear, I think he was doing it for TV. And I was super nervous.
I was shooting a Thompson Center rifle, and he's making all these funny,

(01:19:16):
weird noises, like breathing real hard. The bear or Jim? Jim.
I had the same question. So Jim's laying on the ground next to me. Let's hear one.
He was doing like a predator call.
I'm like, I don't know if that sounds like a bear, but apparently,

(01:19:36):
and he's whispering to me.
He's like he's not turning around he's not running away so that
means he's a big one because he's not scared of us and
i'm like yeah that's not what we want no shit no
shit but the bears the bear starts off about 50 yards away and just i mean bowed
up just walking towards us and you can see it plays on outdoor channel every

(01:19:57):
now and then the same people they call me and tell me my boat's going down canal
boulevard tell me what the show's on but anyway he's walking up and he's He's
just, he's kind of, he's unsure.
The bear's unsure. And Jim's making all these.
I'm like, what the hell have I gotten myself into?
And the bear comes to about 14 or 13 yards away, figures out we're not quite a bear.

(01:20:23):
But in that whole time he's walking, why are you like, I can shoot him way farther away.
You wanted him to be closer, to be clear. So we watched a video.
No, Nick, personally, no.
Absolutely not. But if you watch the video, I can point out times in the video where I'm like,
Jim, I need to cock my gun. Like, I only got one. You do realize I only got

(01:20:45):
one shot, right? This is it. I shoot, and I shoot him in the leg.
He's going to eat you because I'm going to run way faster than you can.
And you've been making all the dead people noises. He's making these noises.
And, in fact, it gets to a point where I take things into my own hands.
Like, the bear is still coming towards us, and I'm laying on the ground flat
on my stomach, and he's next to me.

(01:21:06):
And I'm about seven mayonnaise breads in that day.
Right so my cholesterol is not gonna allow me to get
up and start sprinting like i want to and plus if you do shit
yourself right right it's a lot of man-ass
bread so i lean over and i take things in
my own hand i said i'm gonna cock the gun jim meaning i'm

(01:21:29):
gonna work right right there's no there's no
more stuff for this television show that you're trying to make cool so i
i cocked the the gun and he turns about it
he hears me cock it the bear hears me cock it so he's still point
blank he hears me cut the gun and the bear
stops and kind of turns sideways and then that's when i shoot
the bear and he runs away and i stand up

(01:21:51):
and i'm like holy smokes what is happening right now the cameraman's probably
you don't realize it but the cameraman is like 200 yards behind because he's
smart right and you don't realize it until he zooms out which my wife gives
me hell because my draws are all the way up my butt because my butt's trying
to hang on for dear life, I'm pretty sure.

(01:22:11):
But then the bear runs away. But, no, that was him trying.
He's a really cool guy. And Jim is a huge conservationist and a huge –.
Champion for the hunting industry and what you see
is what you get he's not a hollywood hunter is what i call him he
look he he works his butt off to get those animals and
he's really good at it and he he he does

(01:22:34):
he doesn't have to wear a red handkerchief with the black cowboy hat in order
to shoot animals but he does because it looks cool but he really is he really
is a great hunter and then and i'm sure he's a good hunter but he put a lot
of faith in you he didn't he He didn't know me at all,
but he did know I was from Lafourche Parish.
So I guess he assumed that I could shoot a shotgun.

(01:22:56):
I mean, a rifle, but he, he was really cool about it.
And he, I asked him after I seen him about two years ago and I asked him,
I said, Hey, on our hunt, did you like, why you, why you wouldn't let me shoot it?
Was it bad for me to shoot it? Like from the front.
And he said, and he confirmed what I thought. He goes, no, man,

(01:23:16):
it made for way better TV for that thing to come 15 yards away.
I'm like, cool. Can you call Dr. Patel and tell him Porter Reason to have high
blood pressure just because of stuff like that?
So one of the thousands of cool stories. But, man, and that was because of my
grandfather. My grandfather was real big in Sephora Club.
He happened to know Jim, and Jim invited us up there to go hunt.

(01:23:38):
And he actually invited my grandfather. He said, hey, Ron, I want you to come
up there and shoot a black bear with me. and my grandfather said,
Jim, man, I appreciate that. I'll take your offer.
He said, but I've shot a black bear. Do you mind if my grandson shoots it?
So this was in 2010.
It was actually in April. I'll tell you today, it was April 26, 2010.

(01:24:02):
And the reason I know that is because Paxton was 10 years, 10 days old.
So I told Courtney, shout out Courtney. I said, Hey, hey, I can't miss this opportunity.
Like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I'm sure she understood,
for sure. It's your first kid. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
I have to take this. Nowhere else can I go hunting with Jim Choggy.

(01:24:24):
And she reluctantly agreed. Y'all are still married. Yeah.
Since then, and you can ask her, there's probably been about 25 once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
And she gives me crap about it every single time. But they are.
But look, Jim knew that I had just had a newborn.
And after the show, about two weeks after the show, I get home and I got a package

(01:24:45):
in the mail. And it was Jim's hat. And he had signed it to Paxton.
Oh, man. And it's the hat that he wore on the show.
So just a stand-up guy. Yeah, just a cool guy. Piece of shit.
Courtney didn't like the hat, but Paxton absolutely loved it.
He wanted to throw it away.
Oh, thanks. A reminder that you weren't here.
Well, Nick, I've been in, I've actually been in the, do you have a special name for the room?

(01:25:12):
We call it the trophy room. I call it the trophy room, too. And I actually been in it on Isla Cuba.
I've been inside that room, and I remember walking in.
You went there young, right? Yeah, I was probably 8 to 10. Because you knew
Beaver? Yeah. Beaver got you in. Yeah.
I stayed, you know, I did summers at a babysitter's house, like right next door. Okay.

(01:25:36):
And Beaver would come over with us, and I knew young Beaver,
and I knew Glenn and Mitchell. Okay.
And, yeah, I remember. So what's your thoughts on it? I remember.
What was the first thing you thought when you walked in? Ace Ventura.
What a lovely room of death. Yeah. I get that a lot. that's what that's what
i remember seeing i'm like wow this is this is incredible i mean 360,

(01:26:00):
everything you've never seen yeah right yeah you can't describe it right like
the i remember so the first time i saw it it was also in isla cuba and i'm like
what in the hell is all of this doing in shriever right is it with chucky probably
yeah okay but i couldn't believe it i'm like why Why?
So you would never guess that this is in this house.

(01:26:24):
It's unbelievable, it belongs in a museum. When we say trophy room,
we're not talking about going to the camp and there's six whitetail,
you know, five points on the wall.
What, Nick, talk about some of the species that are in there and maybe if they hold any records or?
The story of the trophy room is it really, it was a sense of pride for me, right?

(01:26:47):
I get to display these animals in my home that have come from generations of hunters in our family.
And it has a lot of similarities to your guy's market, right?
It's something that a previous person in your family started and that you hold with a sense of pride.
I mean, it's probably one of the most important things to you guys is the market.

(01:27:09):
One of the most prized possessions I have in my life is these group of trophies.
And not only the trophies but the stories that come with the trophies,
that's the coolest part is you can walk into
this room and you're surrounded by the how many you have a best guess i'm gonna
say 325 so 325 different species amazing different species so probably more

(01:27:34):
mounts but you can point at any one and if mr ron's there or if nick's the one that Even if Mr.
Ron's the one that killed it, Nick probably knows the story.
You can point to anyone, and they will go off on the coolest story. Yeah.
Point to anyone, and it's that cool.
It really is. And about three years ago, as my grandfather was getting older,

(01:27:57):
I got him in there one time.
And I put on a headset similar to this one. Oh, nice.
And I said, I took pictures of every wall, and I numbered every single animal.
Yes. Tell me something about this animal, and just let him talk.
Wow. Like we're talking now. wow, wow. And then we're going to compile it into
a book that'll hopefully stay with the animals for the rest of their lives.
That'll be amazing. That is how.

(01:28:18):
Legacies. Yeah, 100%. Roan doesn't know a lot of the stories yet because he's
only eight, but I'll be able to let him hear the story in my grandfather's voice. Man. Super cool.
So just for everyone that can't picture it, picture a coffee table made out of an elephant ear.

(01:28:39):
Picture 12-foot grizzly towering over you, which has its own story about getting
confiscated by the president.
And all it is. And a polar bear. Polar bear. What did I say?
Grizzly. There's both. I think there's both.
Oh, yeah. But the polar bear is the cool one, which either came from Greenland

(01:29:01):
or was shot in Greenland. Look, I'm going to let Nick tell the story.
Picture a crocodile, tail up in the air, head down like it's underwater swimming,
chasing after some exotic piranha species or something.
Picture. your dude you have to
see it to believe it it's it's unbelievable i mean
tell us the story of the polar bear dude okay so polar

(01:29:24):
bear my grandfather wanted to shoot a polar bear and it was it was fairly expensive
but the money that was used to shoot the polar bear i want to start off with
telling you this that money was used in the native land for habitat for polar
bears which is not Not unusual. No.
That's how all of these. That's how a lot of it works. You sell the permit to

(01:29:46):
shoot the polar bear and the money goes to basically prolong polar bear lives
by use of habitat up there.
Anyway, long story short, my grandfather goes to the Arctic Circle.
He hunts on a snowmobile for 10 days. He sleeps on ice every night with Inuits.
How old was he? When did this happen? Best guess, I'm going to say 25 years ago.

(01:30:07):
So he would have been somewhere in his late 50s, early 60s. Okay.
That's already impressive six four guy hanging
out with a bunch of guys that are four eleven five two
so it's really funny and they had to build igloos which
i'm sure they weren't happy about having to build an igloo big enough
for a sky at six four he spends

(01:30:27):
he spends a day on the ice he spends 10 days on
ice he i did on the 10th day i
believe he shoots the polar bear with a muzzleloader at the time that he shoots
the polar bear it's the largest polar bear ever harvested with a muzzleloader
in history gets to the polar bear and the polar bear is tagged from greenland
and this was where again this is an arctic circle so like north canada you there was.

(01:30:54):
There was some regulations put in place by a guy named John Kerry.
He was a guy that ran for president. He was a senator.
And he basically banned Greenland polar bears for coming into the country.
And his idea was he was trying to keep guys from going over there and shoot
them, and it would protect the polar bears.
In reality, guys going over there to shoot polar bears helps the polar bears

(01:31:17):
by giving back to the habitat.
We won't get into that anymore. more but but to be clear for anyone
that's not super good at geography also
like me but if you look at a map greenland's not
super close to canada it's it's a pretty good swim
for that polar bear yeah that's unbelievable yeah so he
gets to the polar bear it's tagged from greenland he tries to
get it back in the united states the united states says no you can't bring it

(01:31:39):
back in a u.s fish and wildlife sees it sees it
put it in a u.s fish and wildlife freezer and
14 years goes was by he never
got his polar bear 14 years so he had it tanned they
allowed him to tan it and then they confiscated it sat
in the freezer for 14 years and over that
time i want to say 12 13 guys same thing happened to

(01:32:01):
them they did everything legally they got all the permits got all the licenses
they did everything they hunted in the right areas but when
they got to the polar bears the polar bears had swam over from greenland and
they got the impressive part to me is none of of these guys thought to remove
the tag i think i mean it's not how your grandfather's built right so they all
all the polar bears are confiscated they sit in u.s fishing wildlife freezers.

(01:32:25):
As the story goes my grandfather gets a phone call one day and is notified that
on his last day of presidency george bush portering all the bears that had been
seized because one of his neighbors happened to have a bear in the freezer can
you believe this dude i don't believe this That's so wild.
So my grandfather's bear was pardoned after 14 years. I like to think that George

(01:32:48):
Bush is the one that called everyone personally.
He was 14 people, dude. He could have did it. I can confirm he did not call
my grandfather, but that would have been super cool. I think he tagged the bears.
Hey, this is George. Yeah. This is George. Some people call me president.
I just wanted to let you know.
But I guarantee you my grandfather hearing the news that he was finally going

(01:33:08):
to get his bear was just as good as hearing from the president.
It because he thought in his mind and you talked to him
all those years he thought he would never get it yeah it's like man 14
years yeah it's gone it's it's you're never gonna
get that and look that's a that's a tough hunt right and it
was a world record muzzleloader at the time i think
since then it's been knocked off by about two or three spots so it's still top

(01:33:28):
five in the world but just really cool story about how he got his bear after
all that time and this is this is what but people won't believe as unbelievable
as this story is every animal in there has almost as cool of a story.
There's some, there's some really cool stories.
Some of the ones special to me are the ones that I was able to accomplish.

(01:33:50):
Do with him or be accompanying him with the animal, especially as a young child.
So my first trip to Africa was the elephant trip.
I'm nine years old. My grandfather had a rule in his family.
He said, if you were at least nine years old and you made a 4.0 in school,
you got to go with him wherever they went that summer.

(01:34:10):
And when they went on, when they hunted, they didn't fly to Africa and hunt
for six days and then fly home.
It was, hey, you're flying to Africa and you're You're spending a month of June
there, and then you fly home.
So we were there for 25 to 30 days at a time. So it was a big deal.
So all the kids in our family, it would help them study and make them study
more because they wanted to go on Sephora.

(01:34:30):
So anyway, I qualified my first year. I was nine.
I go with him to Africa. And I don't know if I ever told you all this story.
It's a little bit of a sad story.
We get there, and we start hunting elephants. And the way you hunt elephants is you walk.
And I was nine. you walk about 20 miles a day hunting elephants.
And it's basically, in essence, you're just scouting and you're looking for

(01:34:52):
prints and you're looking for big prints.
It's flat? No, no, no, no. It's pretty hilly. It's probably comparable to like Wyoming.
It's dry, though. It's more like West Texas climate and a hilly type atmosphere.
So we walk 20 miles a day. First day, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day.

(01:35:14):
So I'm five days deep, 20 miles a day. And we saw some elephants,
but not any really good bulls.
And a couple of days, we got chased up the hillside by a troop of elephants
coming through. I don't know if it's called a troop.
You got to check me on that. But a group of elephants coming through.
Sixth day, we got close. We found a bull that we really liked.

(01:35:36):
He was several miles away from us. We tried to get close to him.
We couldn't walk 20 miles that day.
So the sixth day, I come home, and I'm nine. I'm dead tired.
Seventh day, I wake up. My grandma goes, Nick, you look really tired today.
She said, maybe you should spend a day at the camp with me, and then you can take a one-day break.
And then tomorrow, you'll go back, and you'll go hunting with my grandfather. What if?

(01:35:58):
And I said, I don't know, Ma. I said, I'd hate to, I put in all this work with
Paul. I'd hate to miss it. And she's like, I'll play rummy with you.
I love, I love numbers and I love court games.
That's one thing, but that rummy with my grandma. It wasn't super hard to talk
him into it. Yeah. I guarantee I was tired. After 120 miles of walking. Right.

(01:36:19):
So I'll never forget it. I'm sitting in camp that day and my grandfather walks
in with that elephant tail. Yeah.
And I, I cry. He tells me the story all the time, especially whenever it's in
front of a bunch of people and make me feel embarrassed.
But he walked in with that tail and he said, I ran up to him and I grabbed his
leg and I was bawling crying.
I said, Papa, you're not supposed to shoot the elephant when I'm not there.

(01:36:41):
He said, son, you gotta be there every single day. He said, he said, that's part of it.
But the story of the elephant is they got within the distance that he needed
with this bull and he had two other bulls with him.
And every day you're hunting, you're hunting with a game warden that carried an AK-47.
And it's basically like a game warden you have here. Yeah. Was that for the

(01:37:02):
hunter or for the elephant?
I don't know. I think it was for the elephants. I think it was just for protection.
That was the gun that they carried. Gotcha. But he shot the bull. It went down.
And the two bulls that were with him kind of went around the bull,
circled the bull four or five times.
And then turned and started charging towards my grandfather. and the

(01:37:23):
ph there was a couple trackers and then the game warden
and about that time the game warden steps up and
starts shooting bullets over the heads of the elephants just
to try to deter them and my grandfather said it got real real quick they came
within about 25 yards before they decided to turn around but the bulls actually
charged my grandfather after he shot it but after the bull went down he cut

(01:37:47):
the tail off comes back to camp they let it sit overnight night and it was a festival.
It was a big deal. I got a lot of people hear the story and say,
man, he shot an elephant.
Well, the next day we go out there and that night, all the people in the surrounding
villages were notified. Hey, we had an elephant kill.
And these are people, these are not people living in houses.

(01:38:09):
These people living in huts, mud huts with thatched roofs made out of straw.
And we show up to the elephant the next day at like nine o'clock in of the morning
and there's 300 people standing there. Damn.
And most of them women with baskets on their heads to get some ready to get meat.
So we clean the elephant, clean the elephant.
And these people are coming by with baskets and getting big chunks of meat to

(01:38:33):
take back to their, their place to eat.
And I'll never forget it. It was my grandfather, my grandmother,
and then me standing in a line.
And the pH asked us to stand there because these people wanted to thank you.
So I'm standing there with my grandmother and my grandfather,
and these people were coming by with chunks of elephant meat in their baskets.
And most of them just kind of said thank you and kind of nodded a little bit.

(01:38:55):
Some of them would shake a hand.
But I remember, I'm nine, 50% of the women were topless.
So every time one of these topless women would come by, my grandmother would hide my eyes.
So you didn't get to see none of it. I was nine, right?
But obviously I remember that, but I also remember how happy these people were.

(01:39:16):
And the PH would tell us like, man, these guys don't eat meat.
Kind of like the first episode with your dad.
These people don't eat, we didn't eat a lot of meat back then.
It wasn't common, it was expensive. So, man, you think about giving protein
to people that don't have a lot, enough to feed them for 50 days in a row or whatever.
Yeah, and even more than that, you didn't have refrigeration. No. Yeah.

(01:39:39):
So they did a lot of salting and burying with the meat.
But anyway, so I vividly remember making a difference and those guys being super thankful.
And then I also remember going back to camp and eating elephant about every
single kind of different way you could think.
Elephant steak elephant jerky elephant hamburgers

(01:40:00):
that they put in the ground meat and i wanted to
try it every kind of different way it was it was pretty
it was pretty good i mean but none of
that elephant went to waste none of it the skins were used.
For stuff the meat was used everywhere the
ivory we pulled back and we buried a skull in order
to get tusk out so that's that's a point i definitely want
to make none of this elephant went to waste yeah it was

(01:40:23):
all used so y'all got the ear obviously for
the that's the one for the table correct what what
else did y'all take home so the ear was
you so a lot of people don't know this but the african elephant's
ear is the shape of africa where the elephants you see in
the circuits and stuff like that are smaller and they're indian
elephants the african elephant's ear is much bigger because

(01:40:45):
that's what they use to cool their bodies down they they swipe those
ears back and forth in order to provide a cooling of
their body but anyway we took that ear we enclosed in
a glass case and then we had an artist paint the picture of us on with
the elephant we also took the tusk we also took
he had some stools made out of the feet which
was kind of cool that's awesome yeah i want to see that it was kind of cool

(01:41:07):
but the majority of it was those items and i'm telling you about the tail oh
i'm sorry i did forget about tail so elephant's hair i'm only asking because
you know the answer no i'm asking Because you said y'all took the tail home.
Apparently that's something.
So the tail is super cool. And I can show y'all this. But they made bracelets
out of the hair of the tail.

(01:41:28):
And it's like a real, it's almost like wire. And they weave it together.
And then they build it into a bracelet. And we have four or five of them from
the tail of the elephant that they made.
But it's a super cool item that comes from the elephant.
But they make bracelets out of them. Super cool.
So, man, just really cool room to be in.

(01:41:51):
Absolutely. What do you think about when you walk in it? Man, how often do you go in it?
I like to take conference calls on it, in it, especially Zoom calls,
because I like to see people's faces. Yeah.
I don't, you get caught up in
everyday life of baseball and soccer and gymnastics and stuff like that.
And I don't go in it as much as I'd love to. I'd love to tell you that I go

(01:42:11):
in there every single day, spend a few minutes in there.
I do occasionally enjoy a whiskey drink in there and just kind of look around,
especially the more and more of my grandfather ages.
I'd like to try to find some of the stuff that i don't know
about like you were talking earlier i just from hearing the stories over
the years i can recite 90 of the
animals where they came from the name of it how far he was when he shot it who

(01:42:34):
he shot it with yeah but there is 10 percent that i don't recall and i try to
try to figure out which ones those are so next time i see him because he's he's
again he's getting older he's not in the best of health but when i go i like
to bring up those stories because it makes him it makes he remembers it
yeah he doesn't remember a lot of things these days but he can recall
those hunts because it's memories for him right here's

(01:42:56):
what you do nick you get that project going and
done and you get it done like make that a priority yeah
we wish you had done that with you compile those videos you
could throw them up on youtube video would be best throw
them on youtube get the qr code put the
qr code right in front of every animal so the boys can
go with their phone and scan it and then they got papa telling the

(01:43:17):
story man that'd be cool it'd be so awesome yeah it's a
good idea i do have some video of him talking but it's majority of it is just
on audio then wait i got one more question about africa because so i met nick
i graduated with nick's younger brother chucky and chucky told me a story,

(01:43:39):
I'm guessing you were there, I don't know.
But apparently Chucky almost got bit by a cobra. Yeah. So tell me about that.
All right, so me and Chucky, so at the evening times after we finished hunting.
They would serve us dinner as a group, grandfather, grandmother,
PA. How old is everybody in this story?

(01:43:59):
I'm probably, Chucky's nine, I'm probably 13.
Both made 4.0 that year shout out mom from teaching us how to learn uh shout out yeah,
and so we'd eat dinner together and then
chucky and i both we always enjoyed eating
some of the other stuff that was cooked mostly by the

(01:44:21):
the locals yeah so south africa
is known for the stuff called satsa are you familiar with it no
it's basically a cornmeal that they make thick enough for
you to how you would take a piece of bread like
a dinner roll and you'd use it to dip in
the sauce and then eat it they would do that with cornmeal and
they call it sudsa like a corn bread yes softer

(01:44:42):
yeah softer a little more wet but they would
use that and dip it in the gravy and then eat meat with it
at the same time i mean that sounds amazing it's kind of sounds like
a man has bread it's it's not quite on
that level but damn close but i would enjoy
eating the kills that day like that
with those guys and i'd also like to interact with

(01:45:03):
them and i i don't know i was i was a kid and i enjoyed trying
to learn swahili and africans and stuff like that it kind of piqued my interest
but it really piqued my interest was those gravies and the protein and the satsa
so chucky and i would always go out on our we'd eat dinner with our with our
group and then we would kind of go out on our own and explore and be a kid be
a nine-year-old so y'all They were in like a little village kind of deal.

(01:45:25):
So it was all dirt floors and mostly tents and thatched roof huts.
And there was an area for the kitchen. And they always protected the kitchen
as best as possible because the animals would smell the food and try to get
in there and break into it and eat it. By animals, he means lions. Yeah.

(01:45:46):
Lions, hyenas, so on and so forth, leopards.
But Chucky decided one night that he was still hungry. So he goes in the kitchen.
I'm in the tent getting ready for bed. It's probably nine o'clock at night.
Our tent was probably 40 yards from my grandparents' tent. And it was 20 yards
from the kitchen tent. Smart. Right.

(01:46:06):
And I hear Chucky scream, Papa, Papa, Cobra.
And I hear him. I'm like, holy cow. My grandfather says, Chucky, where are you?
No, he goes, Chucky, where is the snake? and chucky goes in the cook tent and
my grandfather says where are you in the cook tent,

(01:46:29):
so back up a little bit this was my second
trip with to africa my first with chucky the first trip i caught malaria nice
i caught you got the full experience right i caught malaria i was in two-lane
hospital for two weeks fighting malaria and of course it was it was during hurricane
Hurricane Andrew, that'll tell you timeline.

(01:46:50):
I'm in the, it's during the hurricane, I'm fighting malaria,
I'm in Tulane. And I remember waking up several days and looking over and seeing my grandfather crying.
I was really really sick but they think i caught it
because i was sitting about a campfire and not sleeping under nets
hanging out and eating and just getting
bit by mosquitoes and having a great time right yeah so my

(01:47:10):
my grandfather i remember my grandfather being pretty
nervous about it but i also remember my parents and especially my
mom being like man i don't know if i'm gonna let the my son
go back he almost lost a son so fast
forward three years later when they finally and let me go
back chucky's in the tent with a cobra and like
if you hear my grandfather tell a story he says man if

(01:47:32):
this kid gets bit by a cobra i'm never gonna be able to go back
into the united states ever again i almost killed nick with malaria now chucky's
gonna die from a snake bite but long story short our our ph our professional
hunter he runs in there like a crazy person and kicks the cobra with his foot
and pulls chucky out of the tent so just Just this guy,

(01:47:54):
keep in mind, this guy only had a half a finger on his index finger because
he tried to catch a puff at her and it bit his finger and he cut his finger
off before it got into his blood.
Dude, that's the fun. This guy was nuts. Yeah. So I gave this guy a high four
instead of high fives. But this guy was nuts.
Anyway, he saved the day and got Chucky out of the cook tent with the cobra.

(01:48:14):
That's how Chucky told me the story. The native guy came in there and saved
his life from certain demise.
I don't know. I think he kicked it. He might have like pimp slapped it out of the way or something.
Another five years, I'm sure he's going to bite it.

(01:48:34):
You know how the stories go. They grow. But yeah, super cool story,
I guess. I don't know if my mom's ever heard that story.
Oh, God. Don't let her listen to the podcast.
Your grandsons will definitely never go to Africa. According to her grandsons.
Man, that's some awesome stories. And there's hundreds of them, thousands of them.

(01:48:56):
300 mounts in that room. Plus species. Yeah, there's three. Some of them are
double. There's more than one of some species.
Don't quote me on it, but I think there's 327 rings of bell, different species.
Now, there's some duplicates. Right. There's probably 25 whitetails.
And several full body. Oh, yeah. Probably.

(01:49:18):
Is the majority of them full body mounts? No. The majority of them is on the
wall, but I'd say there's 20% full mounts. Right. Yeah. There's a lot.
And they're so cool and unique. You're right. They're intricate.
A lot of them are not just standard. It's whole setups. It's whole presentations.
Yeah. So the way we did it, we did it by continent. So one wall,
I think it's 40 foot wide by 20 foot tall, and the entire wall is Africa.

(01:49:44):
And then you kind of turn to where the door is when you walk in,
and that wall is North America.
And then you turn to that three-quarter wall, and it's New Zealand, Australia.
And then you turn and look at the fireplace and it's all the whitetails.
And then to the right of whitetails is all the sheep.
And then to the right of the sheep is the ducks.

(01:50:04):
So each kind of done my section.
And look, it's kind of off subject and you may not find it interesting,
but we put 95% of those animals up in one day.
And the reason I tell you the story, I think we had 32 people help out that day.
We started at six o'clock in the morning and we hung the
last animal at 10 o'clock at night and we hung 300 plus animals

(01:50:26):
that day did you have to get on like autocad or
something first and plan it out no i kind
of thought about it for a couple weeks but i
really didn't have anything spaced out and drawn or anything and i started out
we had two lifts and i started off in the lift trying to think and then i realized
soon that i had to be on the floor being able to conduct traffic like all right

(01:50:49):
lumpo you go up with this one to the left nail it all right up left nail it
and we kind of went from there.
But i'm not just saying it just to say this but i vividly remember.
We started that morning off at 6 o'clock in the morning, and Courtney cooked
everybody boudin burritos.
I swear on my boss. I'm not just saying that because you got to hear it,

(01:51:10):
but we cooked boudin burritos that morning for everybody.
32 different people helped out that day. And at some point, we had like a backlog,
and we had been in the house for two weeks.
So at one point, there's a black bear in the driveway or a hyena in the driveway
with a zebra leg in his mouth or so on and so forth.
And i remember i remember it was

(01:51:30):
the first day that our ups driver pulled up oh yeah
that's awesome and he pulls up and
and he goes hey how you doing my name is such
and such nice to meet you you live here and i'm like yeah and
he's kind of looking at the driveway because i got all these animals in there
he's like is that hyena i'm like
yeah man i said uh my grandfather shot

(01:51:53):
an African eagles you white people are crazy
it's actually a pretty pretty reasonable thing to say so good man so he and
I became pretty good friends but it was pretty funny the first day he comes
to our house we got 45 animals in the driveway waiting to be put on the wall
thanks papa yeah so well Well,

(01:52:14):
tell me about Eagle Energy Services, Nick.
Man, Eagle, okay. Eagle is a oil field gas and oil company that my grandfather started in 1983.
He started with a business partner. They started off as a two-man show.

(01:52:35):
He did a lot of gauging and stuff for his clients.
And it kind of just grew and grew and grew.
And i've always kind of been part of it i i've worked
where i've shoveled out gun barrel tanks in the
middle of summer for him trying to teach me a lesson about going to school and
he he he allowed me to work in

(01:52:56):
the business and a lot like y'all kind of
started especially mr donald where you started in the family business
and you basically work for free i did
a lot of i did a a lot of work with that freelancer yeah
yeah internship so per
se but anyway he allowed me to work in the company and he
kind of taught me the ins and outs of the business but to

(01:53:17):
be honest with you being a consulting business you really
have to know you really have to have the experience the hands-on experience
and that's one thing that always lacked i never really i've been offshore several
times and i've got to to witness and do it but i really never got the opportunity
to work as an operator offshore and really get into the oil and gas production part of it.

(01:53:39):
I've always kind of been from the outside of the business, running the business per se.
So in 2013, my grandfather and his business partner split, and he figured out,
man, it's probably a good time for you to be involved in the ownership of the business.
And me and a couple of guys became owners of Eagle Energy. And over time,

(01:54:01):
those guys have kind of retired.
But I tell the story a lot. I have a business partner named Toby Trostclair. So Toby and I own Eagle.
And everyone asked me, like, hey, why do you have another owner in Eagle?
Eagle, why don't you just own it? Your grandfather owned it. You took it over.
And this is a feather for Toby.

(01:54:21):
Man, Eagle would not be what it is without Toby. Toby is kind of,
he's one of the guys that, Toby's a great success story.
He started off offshore as a roustabout and then worked his way up to compliance
and then worked his way up as an operator and then moved into the office.
And he kind of grew himself from the ground up to being an owner of Eagle Energy.

(01:54:43):
And I say that with a sense of pride. I, Toby, Toby and I are like brothers.
I love Toby. I trust Toby, which is really important in business.
But I also know that Eagle's operating side is in good hands because of Toby.
I trust, just like Toby trusts me on the business side, I trust Toby on the operating side.
So from Ron, it's kind of evolved to just Toby and I owning it now.

(01:55:06):
And the cool, the cool part about it is the team, the people around you, just like here.
It's, yeah you can you can own something and you can run it but without the
people around you and our guys are great we have some some really key guys.
Make this thing successful, but it's the people that are around you that really
make the company. And that's kind of how my grandfather's always treated Eagle.

(01:55:29):
I remember, not to get too far into it, but early in age, I asked my grandfather
how to do a project for Nichols.
And I asked him, I said, what was your biggest lesson that business taught you?
Like, what is something that the business has taught you about being an owner?

(01:55:49):
And I'll never forget it. He
said, man, I was always scared to hire people that were smarter than me.
And I really didn't know what it meant. But what he meant by it was because
of the client relationships, he would thought that if he hired someone smarter
than him, they'd figure out a way to go around him and on the business.

(01:56:09):
And he said, man, that was always a fear of mine. And he said,
the longer I did it, the more I realized the smarter the guys that you hire
around you, the easier your job is. this.
He said, I was always scared about hiring those guys.
But then in reality, the smarter those guys are, the easier my job was because
those guys make good decisions on a daily basis.

(01:56:30):
And I didn't have to come back and clean things up. So that's kind of a lesson he taught me.
Not only that, but also the guys that you, it's an investment in your people, right?
The more you invest in your folks, the more that, the more you return.
And I truly believe that we, Eagle over the years, we've had We've had 30-year
guys, we've had 40-year guys, we have long-tenured guys because we try,

(01:56:53):
A, we try to create an atmosphere that's good for everyone and successful for
them and their families,
but B is we trust those guys and we.
Empower those guys to be able to make decisions that they are actively contributing to your company.
Kind of like, I mean, to relate it to you guys, I know you guys are both third

(01:57:13):
or fourth generation guys.
You probably worked your way up all the way through, but it's also empowering
guys like Brett, Brett with the bacon. Perfect example.
You allowed Brett to go out and say, man, if you think you can make this a hit, let's do it.
Same way when Mr. Donald tells a story about making a beef jerky for the salesman, right?

(01:57:37):
He kind of did it behind Pawpaw's back, but him being able to do that,
look what it's done for the company.
So he took a risk on his own. He was empowered by allowing him to be able to make it.
And in return, he made the business that much more successful.
Same thing with Bo in this building here that we're sitting in.
I mean, Bo, I know Bo did it once he had kind of taken over,

(01:58:02):
but at the same time, his dad entrusted him to be able to make decisions in
order to make the company grow.
Same thing with our company. We've been successful by relying on the people
that we trust and empowering those guys in order to make decisions to make the company successful.
It sounds like you might, you may have, you may have come through your business
maybe without having that struggle.

(01:58:22):
It's kind of, it sounds like you already understood that maybe from,
from some advice from your grandfather, but what do you struggle with?
What's hard? What, what stresses you out?
You know? What stresses me out? What stresses me out is a, it's such a volatile industry. Yeah.
Oil and gas is a great industry, but man, it's volatile and it's very,

(01:58:43):
you hear the term, ride the highs and make it for the lows.
It's, you have to, all the field goes up and down. Everyone knows that.
And I don't, I'm not sure that this business is going to be here for the rest of my life.
Who knows what the oil industry in South Louisiana is. It's been a great industry
for many decades now, but I think we all can agree.

(01:59:04):
Like, do you think the oil field is going to be here in 50 years?
Scary me. That's a tough question to answer.
And look, it affects everyone. And what's it going to look like?
Right. You guys are very dependent upon the oil industry.
Everybody in South Louisiana is. I know. Yeah. Bo, talk about that.
Talk about kind of our oil field dependency. Maybe people don't realize how strongly we're pushed.

(01:59:25):
People, look, everyone has their own opinions on oil and gas.
But whether you like it or not, if you live in South Louisiana,
oil and gas is going to be a big part of everything. thing.
So even if obviously you can't get farther from oil and gas than a meat market, right?
You would think, but every single person that walks in these doors either works

(01:59:47):
directly for oil and gas or benefits some type of way indirectly from, from that,
you know, whether it be, whether it be their customers or oil and gas or their
dad is a, you know, makes tools that get sold to oil and gas.
So it's definitely intertwined in our economy.

(02:00:07):
It's something that I've thought long and hard about, and especially...
When I took over from dad, a big, a big motivation for this expansion was longevity, right?
I thought with one, with one building, it was risky. If, you know,
if the place burned down or like whatever we needed a second location,

(02:00:28):
the old location was just, it was old.
But the point is, yeah, I, I've,
I've, I guess through all that process, I thought about what if,
what if to really succeed seed for another 130
years it can't be here right what
if it needs to be in new orleans or baton rouge so anyway

(02:00:48):
that'll be teddy's problem but good luck
teddy yeah i have i have some more specific kind of questions so first of all
when was eagle energy founded and and pardon me if i'm asking no no it was questions
1983 ron bartels and mike johnson started eagle eagle consulting 83? 83. Okay.

(02:01:11):
Ron was in charge of the production side, and Mike was in charge of the drilling side.
So kind of like now when Toby's in charge of the operations,
I'm in charge of the finance and business operations side. He had a partner.
And they kind of operated as one company, but in two totally different regimes per se.

(02:01:34):
My grandfather was in charge of everything on this side, and Mike was in charge
of everything on that side. and they really didn't mess with each other's stuff.
One point the operator side had my grandfather's
side had probably 250 employees where the
drilling side was mostly consultants and drilling guys
and stuff like that and what was cool about it the
oil field over the years the reason they were

(02:01:57):
able to sustain and be successful was a lot
of times when the production side would drop the drilling side would increase
and vice versa when drilling slowed down the production
side these guys would say man we can't afford drilling more wells
let's just operate the stuff that we have so they'd go out
and start operating these wells and it really was a great counterbalance of
the both sides and it as all these

(02:02:18):
other companies would close my grandfather was able to sustain it because of
his partner and because of the other division when when the time came that they
realized man this it was mr mike's daughter jennifer was taking over the drilling
side and then it was kind of time for me to come into the the company, they realized,
man, it'd probably be a lot better if we separate sides.

(02:02:40):
So Eagle Consulting is still in business.
They still do drilling and stuff like that. And we renamed our company Eagle Energy Services.
And then that's when we had a couple of different partners come in and then Toby came in with me.
And from there, obviously, we've been in business now for 11 years.

(02:03:00):
That's when you, when did you take over? 11 years ago. And how many employees do you have now?
Right now, we balance back and forth between 25 and 45, depending on the oil field.
A lot of those guys are operators. We do a lot of consulting work.
The 1099 guys are not classified as employees, but we probably have 10 or 15 of those guys.

(02:03:21):
And it's just, like I said before, it's really high caliber guys that are very
intelligent and very production savvy guys.
They really make our job easy by having that knowledge.
And then this is my next question, which may not be easy to answer,
but what does your company do?
Our company provides oil and gas products.

(02:03:45):
And gas expertise to smaller independent oil companies.
So what the, the gist of our company is we provide operators that,
that stay on the platforms and produce the wells on a daily basis.
That's probably accumulate our counts for 50% of our revenues.
The other 50% of our revenues are gauging guys and guys that oversee construction

(02:04:09):
of production and stuff like that. and in management.
Long story short, we don't work for the guys like Chevron or Exxon or BP.
We work for guys that you've never heard of that are smaller independent companies
that say you have $20 million and you say, you know what, Nick,
I want to be in the oil and gas industry, but I have no idea what to do.

(02:04:30):
You would call us up and we would take care of that for you.
We would be the operating arm of your company.
You put up the money, you buy the well, we go in
and build a facility once it's drilled we don't
do any drilling but once it's drilled we come in set up the
production equipment hook it all up and start
producing the well sell the well for you and so on so forth give

(02:04:52):
you advice on how you should treat the well because
so how much of this is onshore versus offshore so the word onshore versus onshore
do you mean over i don't know what i'm state waters to be clear i don't know
what i mean okay so louisiana classifies yeah is it Is it on the water or is
it on the land, I guess? I'd say about half and half.

(02:05:13):
Louisiana classifies anything inside of three miles as state waters. Or excuse me.
There's been some argument on that. Some say three leagues for sake of Redfish,
Red Snapper. You know I'm talking about Shane.
But some say three leagues, which would be closer to nine miles.
Some say three miles of state waters.
But basically anything that's still on the shelf.

(02:05:35):
So we don't go to deep water. We don't have platforms where you're catching
tuna and stuff like that.
We have more stuff on land and older facilities that some of these bigger companies
have abandoned and said, we'll sell it to you for pennies on the dollar.
You take but it still has some oil left yes
absolutely yeah just not something big enough for those
guys to have to deal with which a lot of

(02:05:57):
money has been made by guys picking up these wells and producing them
and selling the oil from it yeah and that's where we kind of come
in and we're more of like a hand holder
for some of these smaller guys and help give
advice to these guys in order for them to be successful
in all business so where do your employees come
from like how have they developed this expertise

(02:06:19):
is it from your company or are they from a
little of both we've we've had some long time guys that
started as a as a roustabout so we
for example he started out at the bottom and kind of learned over the years
by having hands-on training from other guys that have come and gone we have
a guy in our office i'll give him a shout out his name is mike luke he worked

(02:06:39):
for my grandfather for a long time kind of went off and did his own thing and
then came He came back to us and he is a...
Book of knowledge i mean this this is a 40 or 50 year
old 50 year oil field guy that just
knows everything and anything about the oil field and it's
just from him being in the platforms and being on and going

(02:07:00):
through it and i mean it's invaluable to have
that guy in your office right because he knows the answer
it's crazy to me because a client
will call with hey we're having this such a problem this is
what's happening this is what's happening and mike can fire off
an answer in a split second like oh it's just chokes
something's going on with the choke or you got

(02:07:21):
a dump valve that's hung up or you got a uh separator
that is plugged or something just he'll know like
like instantly like oh i don't remember that and and he has a his memory is
insane like oh yeah i remember in 1999 i went on platform i was walking down
the second jacket on the left and there was a separator and the same thing happened

(02:07:41):
this is what you need to do it's It's those are the type of guys my grandfather was talking about,
like having guys that are super smart around you that just help with the company.
And it truly is a blessing to have those guys in that office to be able to not
only learn from or not only have handling your day-to-day business,

(02:08:01):
but also learning from those guys.
Absolutely. So.
What's next? What's next for Eagle? equal. Man, we, I'd be honest with you.
The oil field has been pretty decent the last couple of years.
We've been, we've been kind of chugging along.
We're not, we're not trying to be the biggest and the best, but we're trying

(02:08:22):
to just be able to manage the clients that we have and give them a decent product
and kind of, and kind of stay in that niche.
So my grandfather, my grandfather father has a saying a long time ago,
we had an opportunity to be huge, really, really big company.
And my grandfather turned it down and I was probably 13, 14 years old.

(02:08:46):
And I didn't understand that.
And I asked him one day, I said, why would you turn that?
Why would you turn that contract down? Like that could have quadrupled the size of our company.
Why did you turn it down? And he And he said, son, first of all,
for us to be able to go and hunt for a month at a time.
Don't want all the headaches left behind. You can't just leave your guys to

(02:09:09):
have to deal with that while you're going hunting. So I enjoyed hunting and he knew that.
But the most important point was, he said, you know, if I got five buckets of
money and we're able to make a decent living off of this company with the stress
that we have at this low level,
why would I want to make 10 buckets of money with 10 tons of stress?

(02:09:30):
He said, I'll never be able to spend this money that I already have made with
no stress, why would I need 10 buckets?
There's no point in me trying to increase the size of this company.
If we're happy with the way, the point of the story is he was happy with where he was.
He didn't have to get bigger and have all the headaches, which,
Bo, you're shaking your head.

(02:09:51):
No, I'm nodding because that's the same thing I've heard from dad and my grandpa for all these years.
So I 100% understand it. my
my next question though becomes how do
you make sure you pass this on paxton or ron
or or even jolie or whoever whoever's next i'll be honest with you i don't know

(02:10:12):
that how does it make it to the next generation i don't know if i want to i
mean obviously we all want better for our kids and what we have and we want
to give we want to leave a legacy we want to leave them with something as specifically for work.
I vividly remember I was in my senior year of my undergraduate at Nichols.
And at this point, it was kind of a foregone conclusion in my head that I was

(02:10:36):
going to work for my grandfather.
I'd been there every day. And the guys that used to pick on me a little bit
say I never really did anything except just show up and collect a check.
But I started working in the company and I went to my grandfather's office one
day and I was thinking about going I want to get the graduate degree at Nichols,
that executive master's.
And I asked him, I said, Paul, do you think I should go get my master's?

(02:10:59):
Do you think that I'm going to be able to use that in this company?
What do you think I should do? And he said, Nick, I'll be honest with you.
I don't know if I want you to be in this company. And it came as a shock to me, like, what?
Like, what are you talking about? I've been working here for five years,
like you grooming me in order to be here.
And he said, because I don't know if this is going to be here long enough for

(02:11:19):
you to be able to do it for the rest of your life.
And he said, look, I hope it is, but I don't know for sure.
And it was powerful because i understood
at that point like man he wants me to take over
but he's unsure if i'm going to be able to
be successful with it for the rest of my life because of the state of oil field
yeah he didn't want to give you a sinking ship right obviously man obviously

(02:11:43):
we've been able to make a decent living in it for the last 11 years since i've
taken over but you've already seen the ups and downs absolutely i can understand
why look i remember sitting on my couch for covid
it with my hands in my head when oil went to negative $22 a barrel,
I'm thinking, oh, crap, what the hell am I going to do?
You know what I mean? I'm going to call Bo and see if he needs a butcher. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

(02:12:04):
I think you did. I probably did. I think you did. I mean, think about that.
It's super scary, right?
And those are the trials that my grandfather was talking about.
Minus $22 a barrel of oil is not a very good high price. Well,
83, I'm trying to think, when did oil shit the bed in the 80s?
It was not too long after that, yeah.

(02:12:27):
And they made it through that. They made it through. And I asked him about that,
and that was mostly because he was very lean.
It was him and four other guys. Yeah. So he was so lean that he was able to make it through that.
Now, granted, the next 10 years after that was the all boom in the Gulf where
they were drilling platforms every other week, and he timed it perfect.

(02:12:48):
But he had to weather that first storm in order to get there.
So it's something I think about a lot.
Maxon wants to be a cardiologist. Hopefully he is a cardiologist because I'll
be able to fire Dr. Patel and he can tell me to stop eating mayonnaise bread.
But I'm going to encourage them, kind of like the stance of my grandfather.
I'm going to encourage them.

(02:13:08):
And if they absolutely fight me on it and want to be part of our business,
obviously we're going to show it.
And same thing with Toby's kids. But I'm going to try to encourage them to go
out and do what they want to do.
I don't want them to feel like they have to do what I did. but
if they want to then i'm 100 and
trying to try to give them what they need in

(02:13:29):
order to take it over yeah all you can do is
is pass on the skills man and you get to use all the resources that you have
to pass those skills and i believe you know for me same with you is i'm gonna
use hunting and fishing like i'm gonna use this this lifestyle that we have
here in south louisiana and i'm I'm going to take it to my full benefit.

(02:13:51):
You know, I'm going to use every resource that I have and start them early and
treat them like an adult.
You know, it's the one place in life that we're okay treating a seven-year-old like an adult.
For me, that's in the woods or that's on the water. It's, hey,
you know, here's your chance. Prove it.
Prove you can pay attention. Prove you can be safe. That's true.

(02:14:14):
That was all of my first experiences feeling like a big boy or a grown-up.
It was always on the boat or in the woods.
Driving a four-wheeler. I mean, I remember six years old driving a four-wheeler
thinking I was the baddest dude on the planet.
Or shooting a shotgun for the first time. Yeah.
As soon as you get home, you're treated like an eight-year-old again.

(02:14:36):
But when you're out there, you're one of the guys.
All the uncles and cousins or whatever treating you. And look,
and think about the confidence that instilled as a young man.
Oh, 100%. I mean, a lot of people don't associate that with it.
You take a kid hunting, watch the confidence in that kid grow exponentially.
I mean, it just...
Said it teaches you how to be an adult it teaches you responsibility it teaches you,

(02:15:01):
several life skills that you don't get anywhere else
except for hunting yeah that's the only place or fishing
so and man it starts with
keeping all those things special you know keeping
telling the hunting stories you know before and after a trip and always giving
them something to look forward to and you can't do what you know we were talking

(02:15:23):
about earlier like the speckled limits like if you don't catch your limit you
can't show any kind of negative you know.
Feedback to a kid right it all has
to just still be the the best trip ever the secret
spot the secret bait the secret color the
the special technique papa taught me to

(02:15:44):
call in the bears like that's oh
uncle jim showed me that secret yeah
those are the things hyperventilate this bearing right we
we don't realize that though how important those things are
you know to a kid and to their buy-in to
this to the sport and and whatever it leads to conservation
and it leads to more good and more good and look we're just to touch on that

(02:16:08):
for a second i had a buddy and it's he i talked to him about his son hunting
he's like man my son don't like to hunt i don't know what it is i was like well
tell me tell me about the experience he's like well we woke up we got to the ladder stand,
the kid's six got to the ladder stand he sat in the ladder stand it was about 28 degrees outside.

(02:16:32):
And he kept moving I was like he's sick,
and I kept fussing him because he's moving because we wasn't going to see anything
and I wanted him to be still so we could see something so it would make it fun
I like first of all he probably,
was freezing to death he's probably shivering you don't put
a six-year-old in a ladder stand you know what

(02:16:52):
i mean you got to try to make it fun for him right ron loves
to pee by the stand and it drives me absolutely
nuts but the first time he did he shot a deer
so guess what every time we go to that stand boy you better pee on that stand
right dude that think about really runners are so superstitious but really think
about that think about how special that is like it's it's more special than

(02:17:14):
you realize it just Just something as small as that is having a tradition and
having a thing and a memory. Absolutely.
It's important. Absolutely.
Man, I have no doubt in my mind that you're going to pass on some good habits
and some good – you're going to raise some good leaders.
And I look forward to seeing those boys grow up and see what they can do,

(02:17:39):
see if they start that ED White.
DU chapter? You're going to look at that. We're going to be looking for the
guys right out at Boudoir. Or ski shooting team or whatever they do,
man. Listen, Nick's doing something right.
So two years ago, like for Halloween, and I don't know Paxton that well, dude.
Like, of course, Nick and I are friends and he knows me, but it's Halloween

(02:18:00):
and he's in our neighborhood because our neighborhood's a big trick or treat.
And I didn't even see him. He saw me first because, you know,
he's in a costume and he walks right up to me.
Hey, Mr. Bo, how you doing? And shakes my hand. Firm grip, looks me straight
in the eyes. I'm like, Pax, where's your dad?
He's like, oh, he's not here. Boy, that was me.

(02:18:22):
He shook your hand or you did it? He did that to me, and he called me Mr. Bo.
Oh, really? No, then he also did that to you that night.
Because I remember. Hey, man. It's the thought that counts. He did the same
thing to me. But seriously, dude.
He's raising those type of kids that have that much confidence.
Man, that makes me feel good. I appreciate you sharing that story.
I should have told you because it was two years ago. That's funny.

(02:18:48):
He's a grown-up, man. He's walking the walk. He's doing well. I'm proud of him.
We talk a lot about respect. We talk a lot about handshake. We talk a lot about your word.
Just kind of the things that my grandfather passed on to me.
And just like you said, it's going to be passed on to him.
He's engaged, man. He'll walk up into a ring full of 30-year-old men and just

(02:19:13):
keep in step with them. It's because he's been at a camp since he was three.
It's because he's been giving soccer balls to African orphans.
It's because it's been through because of the life he's lived and the debt and who his dad is,
well nick i appreciate it man this was awesome yeah man
i had to do a lot more of this i had a great time i
you mind if i tell one more story before we go of course this is gonna be a

(02:19:37):
good story only if you tell two more and well all right so we go to we're on
our way to i think we're going to campeche mexico to go turkey hunting and it's
me and beaver and paul and we Oh, I know this story.
We bought a, I think we had like, what's the biggest pack of vacuum sealed bee
jerky y'all sell? Is it a pound? It's half pounds. Half pound.

(02:19:59):
Which, a considerable amount of bee jerky, especially 10 years ago, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Get to customs in mexico and we
get to and they got 15 pounds keep in mind yeah
we got like i don't know if it's 15 but i
guarantee you it was five packs so two
and a half pounds me ron and beaver we

(02:20:21):
go through mexican tsa i don't know what it's called
and the alarm goes off
and like man what's going on so they open
up the bag and it's beef jerky and
they say you can't you can't bring this in and they
want to take it and my grandfather grabs the
beef jerky out his hand he says no in hell you taking this so we

(02:20:44):
so we we have to go to our flight we have to get
through tsa to get to our flight but my grandfather was
not leaving that beef jerky so he took his hands opened
up the beef jerky and we ate five packs five
packs of beef jerky standing in line standing in
line i got i'll never forget it i and i'm

(02:21:05):
probably 27 28 beavers
probably 23 24 first of all i
was i was lightheaded because the sodium intake second of all i had a piece
of beef jerky stuck between every single one of my teeth in my mouth but we
stood there and ate every single piece of beef jerky because we are not leaving
it with those people man that's so awesome dude that's That's a great story. Oh, I love it.

(02:21:31):
Man, I appreciate you guys having me. I had a good time today.
Oh, thanks, Nick. Dude, great guy.
Been a friend for a long time. And, man, just so much more stuff we need to
talk about next time. I'd love to come back.
Appreciate it. After we go, we can tell the story after we go shoot a fish.

(02:21:52):
Yeah. I'm going to hold my breath for 35 seconds. Hopefully,
I can get down there. Let's get Paxton underwater.
Sounds good, brother. All right, y'all. Later.
All right, that's it for this episode of the Miracles to Meet podcast.
We ask that you share it with at least one person in your life that you think needs to hear it.
You know, if you got a little something from it, you got some little goose pimples

(02:22:14):
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And if you loved it, please leave us a five-star review. That'll really help out.
And if you only loved it like four
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(02:22:34):
if you have any personal questions or comments about the episode shoot them
over to bourgeois meat market on facebook or instagram and we'll reach back
out and if you have any ideas for any cool future guests
please shoot those over too we're all always interested in hearing um who else
is out there and what kind of cool stories we might be able to bring into this

(02:22:58):
place see you next time thanks for listening.
Music.

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Ep. 3 - Nick Lichenstein: Ducks Unlimited | Wildlife Conservation

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 3 - Nick Lichenstein: Ducks Unlimited | Wildlife Conservation